The Stranger I Knew
by Black Waltz 0
Summary: The Three Laws of Robotics governs the way that a robot lives and serves humans. With Quote's memories fragmented, he is the only one able to disobey them. Curly Brace has a new mission now, to save him from the stranger inside himself.
1. The First Law, Thou Shalt Not Kill

The Stranger I Knew

A Cave Story Fanfiction By

Black Waltz 0

(A/N: Boy, this fic is dark. I had a really weird dream the other night and wrote down a lot of what it had been. Fleshed out a little, the dream is this fic. Some people say that my dreams are what brings out the best in my writing ability. I hope this piece will seem top notch to you, and I hope you enjoy it. Oh, and I was listening to the Berserk soundtrack's song 'Murder' when I wrote this, so it's the perfect music to listen to as you read.)

xxx

_Thou shalt not kill._

He had left a path of destruction behind him.

Quote was climbing a staircase of marble high into the sky, ascending from the throne room into the unknown, Black Space. The booster he was wearing made it much easier to reach higher places, but it was often that he found himself dangling from a ledge, his hands trying to find finger-holds in the ancient stone. He did not tire very easily, but still found the whole business annoying and time consuming. Heights didn't scare him, but he didn't like them very much all the same.

He had murdered a human being only a short time ago, something that was taboo, forbidden. There was a binding law that prevented the spilling of human blood, one of the distant three laws of robotics, but Quote was either too flawed or too much of an amnesiac to remember and obey them. Had his memory been complete, he would have shut down the moment he raised his gun to a living breathing man. This is what had set him apart from the other robot on the island, his only other friend who shared his condition. He was not unique in his penchant for kindness, rather, he was unique in his ability to deal death to humans. To kill.

With ten years of lost memories, he had programmed himself to be a murderer.

Although this was what he had to do, he knew he didn't have to like it. And he didn't, either. According to Curly, his original mission was to be a mission of peace and liberation. He had done that when he took the life of the Doctor and shattered the demon crown hard upon the ground. But now it was not enough. He had to free the island itself as well. To free it from the skies. As long as the island floated in the sky and bore its deadly red flowers, the mimigas were always destined to be slaves.

With a slight heave, Quote pulled himself up from the last huge stair in the sky staircase and removed his gun from his belt, yanking out the burnt energy cylinders and replacing them with new cartridges. He was pushing this weapon to the edge, but it was really all he had left. It only had to hold out for just a little while longer. Dropping the spent useless cylinders, he heard them clattering distantly on the ground, where a pool of blood and the body of the Doctor lay abandoned. He had seen something speed out of the body upon the moment of his death, following the trail of the red crystal that had shot out of sight. Maybe it was merely a reflection of it, or a trick of the light. No matter what the reason, Quote had to press on.

Black space seemed to be a storage room right above the red flowers and the throne room. It must have been the safest place on the whole island for the core to be kept. Not only the frenzied mimigas, but the Doctor himself had been its guard. In the end it hadn't helped them one bit, because here he was, at the end of the road.

The core looked discarded and dead, like the shell of a giant prehistoric crustacean. There were scorch marks all over its body from when he and Curly had battled it within the underground base. Quote moved towards the main chamber of the core's body, climbing over some of the smaller ones because they hindered his path. As he got within firing range he began to power up his gun, figuring that a concentrated blast would be enough to destroy it.

"That's far enough!"

A woman appeared. Her blue hair was a tangled wreck and she was leaning heavily on her staff for support. Her green dress was spotted with darker patches, where the blood from her injuries had seeped through. Breathing heavily, she had the look of a wolverine backed into a corner, injured but still ready to fight. Misery. The witch he had thought he killed, but had apparently only wounded. Quote released the trigger and sharply altered the angle of his shot, firing the round straight into the ground. It left a small blackened crater as the smoke cleared away.

She made an unfamiliar gesture with her hand and a secondary shape fuzzed into view, that of the small Sakamoto child that had been transformed into a mimiga. Quote recognised her as Sue. The girl had a sleepy hypnotized look in her eyes as she flopped down into a little heap before Misery, where the witch risked her balance by pointing the ball of her stave at her, the instrument glowing a little with inner power. "If you value her life, step away from the core!" She ordered, giving Quote the impression that she was going to touch the mimiga with her staff. And then what? Would it electrocute her?

Quote's voice was young and timid, but also a touch artificial. "Let her go." He said.

He stood down, taking two or three steps back. He could still shoot her from here, but there was always a faint chance that in the time before Misery saw the shot and experienced the pain, she would be able to harm Sue. He had no choice. The woman smirked. "Hmph. So even a robot can care for the life of another. You really _are_ different from the others who came here so many years ago…"

Sue blinked herself awake. She began to squirm a little but the first thing that became clear to her eyes was the glowing stave held by her captor. She immediately fell still, but glanced to Quote pleadingly for help. The robot didn't know whether to attack or stand still. He was caught in a dilemma. Misery's eyes became a little faraway, pulling the ball of her staff away from Sue's body just a fraction. "I never dreamed you would defeat the new king…"

The stupid robot had ruined everything. The witch woman could easily stand servitude and all manner of unpleasant duties, but what she could not take was the long silent periods between the lords of the demon crown, where all she was forced to do was wait. Sometimes for centuries. _That_ was hellish. It had felt so much like the last wait would be over, but because of this robot, she was wrong. All she wanted to do was make it go as far away as possible. Nothing else had been able to wound her so viciously.

And she was a human being, too. Robots couldn't kill humans, it was one of their three sacred laws. …Right?

Sighing, Misery closed her eyes. "Well, so be it." She muttered, using her staff to support her trembling body once more. Sue immediately leapt to her feet and swiveled around sharply, dead set on not letting Misery see her back. The blue-haired woman brushed stray tangles of her fringe out of her face. "Let me offer you a deal…"

_**Wait…**_

Sue saw something small twinkle in the darkness. Something red. A nanosecond later, Quote saw it too. Their attention became diverted from Misery and they strained to see exactly what the red thing was. It was floating several dozen yards above them, right above Misery's head.

_**I will not… let you bargain for me… Misery…**_

The sound did not come from around them, it came from the inside of each of their own heads. Misery craned her head up to look as well. She would have flown up there to check it out for herself, but there was not enough magic left in her to spare. The threat she had made to Quote was mostly a bluff. Still, though that voice was not real, it was familiar.

Quote scoped out the area above them that contained the red twinkle. Circuitry hummed within him as he experienced the odd sensation of rushing forwards a great distance, while his legs remained where they were. It was exactly like having binocular eyes. Immediately he blinked the special ability away and cocked his gun at the far-off shape, going rigidly tense. "Look out!" He cried. "It's the red crystal!"

_That's not possible. _He thought to himself as the crystal began to descend at a slow, regal pace, glittering like a ruby from the crown of a malevolent god. _I killed the Doctor. I know I did. I checked to make sure his heart was not beating!_

_**Hoh-hoh-ho…**_

_**Hearts are only physical, little robot…**_

_**This is much, much more…**_

Quote flinched. It had read the inner processes of his mind? That was even more impossible! Misery ignored Sue as the mimiga girl made a break to Quote's side of the no-man's land, ducking around to hide behind his frame. The red crystal was visible to even the common eye now, rotating as it fell like a lazy planet. The facets of the gem were cleanly cut and glass-like, but behind the surface swirled dark liquid, deeply red liquid, like blood. Red particles appeared around it, parts of the Doctor's being in a gaseous form. Connected to it, it somehow felt like the crystal itself was alive.

Misery staggered a few steps away, using her staff as a crutch and unwittingly entered Quote's side of the Black Space. She was starting to tremble, her body going into mild shock now that her previous battle with Quote was now over. The gem stopped falling when it reached six feet off the ground, roughly at the right height of a tall man's brow. It flipped a few times, casually, then was still. "…My Lord?" The witch whispered, caught between hope and anxiety. The woman seemed to be ignored. Quote fired a test shot at it warily, hoping that it would deal some damage. The barrel of his Polar Spur emitted a brief pulse of light and spat out a ray of white fire, striking the crystal on its front.

It reflected and boomeranged right back at him, the robot seizing Sue with one hand and diving a little to the left. Quote rolled, scraping over the stones and jagged rocks that were scattered all over the floor, but somehow finding himself lying on his stomach, the mimiga girl safely wrapped within one of his arms. If that light had touched them, whatever part of their body that had made contact with it would have been vaporized. Being destroyed by his own weapons was _not_ the way Quote wished to die.

He got to his feet again and set Sue down on the ground, continuing to hold his traitorous weapon but knowing that it would be of no use. "Who are you?" Quote asked of the crystal. "What are you?"

_**You murdered me, little robot… **_

_**You stole my flesh away…**_

_The First Law of Robotics. A robot may not… a robot may not… a human being… inaction… come to harm…_Quote shook his head a little and focussed his processing at the matter at hand. He had felt the traces of a memory coming back to him, a personal file that was becoming uncorrupted, but it had come at the worst possible time. The Doctor was still, somehow alive.

_**Since you have ruined my body, I feel I must take a new one…**_

_**Yours!**_

It moved fast. Faster than Quote could.

For a moment it felt like something had shot straight into him, like a bullet, but there was no exit point that ripped though his back in chunks of plastic and wiring. It was more like he had been punched in the chest by a large, blunt and heavy fist. His heels pressed down against the marble floor as the force shoved him a foot or so away. Part of his shirt tore across the front, leaving bare a glimpse of the plastic and rubber ensemble that was his flesh. Quote's mouth hung open, frozen before a breath he should have taken but didn't.

He felt a deep throbbing in his sternum, something akin to a heartbeat but not quite the same. Slowly, his fingers went lax and dropped the Polar Spur that he had been carrying. It clattered to the floor and remained still. One hand crawled up to touch upon his breast tentatively, the only part of his body that seemed to want to move. It sensed heat and energy coming directly from that foreign, alien pulse. He could not understand it.

Sue and Misery watched this all happen. The small mimiga girl was not at the right vantage point for her to see exactly what had transpired, but the midnight blue-haired witch called Misery had become the perfect audience. The red crystal that had contained the soul of the Doctor had rammed itself straight into the little robot's body, breaking through the outer part of his chassis and embedding itself deeply into his chest. It was sending off little pulses of red energy now, calling the floating particles that had one been the Doctor's body home.

It was possession of the most intimate variety, and it filled Misery herself with deep-rooted horror.

Quote was trembling fiercely and gritting his teeth, his inner nervous system becoming introduced to a secondary consciousness. He could sense that other presence now, a specter that had floated into his mind and body, a parasite that was muffling his thoughts, suffocating them- no, binding both of their consciousness as one. It bled into his memory banks and read all his files, all his accessible memories and hopes. It was not much in the total scheme of things, but it was all he had left. His mind started to cry out in protest to the mental rape as loudly as it could, the sound fading with each little pulse of the crystal as he was overwritten.

_GET OUT OF ME GET OUT OF ME GET OUT OF ME GET OUT OF ME GET OUT OF ME GET OUT OF ME!_

…_Get out of me… get out of me… get out of… me…_

After only a short, agonizing minute, that pained cry in his mind had disappeared completely. As one last reflex action, the last impulse of Quote as a free-thinking individual, his lips parted and he uttered a glass-shattering scream, high pitched and boyish, with no discernable quaver in its tone. It sounded like a siren. Sue cried out as well and pressed her hands to her large floppy mimiga ears, trying to shut out the sound. It was so loud and heart-wrenching that she felt like she wanted to cry.

Misery's staff dropped to the ground as she covered her ears as well, watching with eyes half squinted shut as every last particle of the Doctor entered the robot's body via the red crystal. When this was completed, the pulsing stopped and so too did Quote's death cry. It faded out like somebody had grasped his volume dial and was steadily turning it down. The robot thudded to his knees, his head bowed and his eyes sliding shut. The crystal no longer shone. It lay embedded in his chest and glistened slightly whenever light chose to reflect itself upon it, but that was all.

"Hey…" Sue stepped forward, treading lightly because she was still in the home base of the enemy. She could fight, but she wasn't nearly strong enough to defend herself against the witch that was still alive. Wounded, but alive. Her eyes strayed to the Polar Spur that lay discarded in the pieces of Quote's broken front, wondering of she could use it or not. Mimigas didn't really have proper opposable thumbs, but still, she could try. "Are you alright? You're not broken, are you?" She grasped the weapon by its barrel with one hand and tapped Quote lightly on the shoulder with the other, standing so close behind him that she could have hugged him if she wanted to.

Standing up straight again, Misery's look of pain transformed into haughty euphoria. She made a slight gesture and her staff floated up from the ground of its own accord and settled itself happily into her hand. "Hmph." She muttered, looking at the broken robot with distaste. "So my Lord chose self destruction over the chance for immortality, only to destroy this already flawed toy. How sad. Now he will never know his earthly utopia."

"You're lying!" Sue cried, grabbing onto Quote's shoulders firmly and giving him a rough shake. The body threatened to topple over. "He's not dead! He's just… sleeping or something. He got turned off. He can't die!" The little mimiga's actions only served to amuse Misery more. She started to laugh a deep sultry laugh, aware for the first time in a very long age that she was free. The demon crown was destroyed. There was no be no more masters. "Come on!" Sue yelled, her shakes beginning to resemble rough kicks and punches. "Get _up_, you broken hunk of junk!"

Sue raised Quote's weapon and fired a single shot, one that was shaky and flew harmlessly past Misery's side. It was impossible for her to aim the weapon and pull the trigger at the same time. Her little thumbs were too stubby to reach it. Cowering behind Quote's lifeless body, it was all she had left as her last line of defense, and it was only a matter of time before she died.

"Unluckily for _you_, I have absolutely no love for this island. I despise it and everything upon it. After I kill you, little one, I shall destroy the core and all will come crashing down to earth!" Misery's red eyes glowed as she raised her staff, a black ball of dark energy forming at its very tip. It was destined to end the life of the enemy that stood before her. Suddenly, the witch woman shrilled a crowing laugh. "I will be free, for now and all _eternity_!"

Quote moved in an astounding blur of motion. The elbow of his right arm drew back and struck Sue in the middle of her small chest, making the mimiga girl squeal in pain and throw the gun she held high up into the air. His body twisted slightly, amazingly animate considering he had been totally shut down only moments before. The mechanical whirrings of his tendons sounding softly as his muscles flexed, Quote snatched his tumbling weapon out of the air and pointed it directly at Misery, the energy cylinders of the weapon powering up as more time went by. The small robot's eyes were narrowed in anger, an emotion that rarely made an appearance on his face.

Spreading her arms, Misery conjured more balls of foul dark energy and held them at the ready, poised to hurl them at Quote and Sue if any of them made so much as a twitch. The barrel of the robot's weapon was pulsing with repressed power, she didn't want to think about what it would do to her in her weakened condition. Maybe it was time to bargain with them. "Listen," she spat, her voice hissing and serpentine, "you can die together with the island, or you can leave and forget you ever came."

Peeking out from behind Quote's shoulder, Sue sensed that something was terribly wrong. Her advanced mimiga sense of smell told her that Quote didn't smell right, that he smelled far different than before. Realization came to her in an instant, the girl tentatively taking a step away from him. He smelt like red flowers.

On one knee with his weapon held far out in front of him, Quote's look of hardened determination gave way to a frightening expression, a deadly, terrifying smile. He spoke, but even though the voice was undeniably that of the small robot, the words were clearly that of another. The other. "You shall not escape…" He cooed, ending his sentence with low, evil laughter.

Misery blanched. She suddenly became unbearably aware of the other soul that was looking out at the world from behind Quote's eyes, using the soul of its host as a pedestal, if robots really did have souls in the first place. Had the Doctor really come back, crawled up from the very boundaries of death? Yes, Quote's gaze almost seemed to have a paralyzing affect on her. "Who goes there!" She called, already well aware of the answer.

Quote stood up, the gem buried in his chest beginning to emit a warm, eerily comforting glow. A few small parts of his front came free and joined the debris on the ground as he shifted about. His motions were a little clumsy, ungainly, but he never moved the barrel of his gun from its particular direction, pointing it at Misery's face. He laughed again, sharp and curtly, obviously amused. "Have you really forgotten the voice of your master?"

Sue gasped behind him, now deeply believing what she knew to be true. Quote's eyes flicked to Sue momentarily, then went back to Misery once more. He took a step closer towards the witch woman, gesturing with one sweep of his free hand the impromptu modifications that had been done to his new body. "The power of the red crystal is powerful indeed. It fills me even now." Quote touched the crystal carefully with one finger and then let go. "My body may be substituted, but my consciousness has never been more distinct. It almost seems amplified in this cybernetic body! It feels as if I have become a superman!"

Astonishment gave way to anger. She had come so close to freedom, and now it was going to be prematurely taken away from her. Misery growled, uttering an animal-like sound as her madness grew, becoming hardly even afraid of the gun anymore. "You…" She spat, hating the robot that Quote had been, and hating him even more now that he shared the same body as her former master. It just wasn't right, the idea of co-existence was too atrocious.

He took two further steps forward, spreading one arm wide like he was about to offer her an embrace. Quote's tone changed to a sympathetic one. "What's wrong, Misery?" He asked softly, nearly kindly, a robot gently trying to coax a witch woman not to attack. He looked down at himself momentarily and seemed to make a connection. "Does my form frighten you?"

He thought her a coward. Yes, she did feel fear, but denied it, bitterly denied it. Letting out a short scream of anger, bordering on hysteria, Misery raised her staff high and prepared to rain magic down upon the mimiga girl and her master who was still impossibly alive. "Are you not dead!" She shrilled. "_Begone!_"

The magic struck him without fault and Misery's heart leapt into her throat when she heard him grunt, thinking that it had hurt him. The orbs of magic slid across his body and burnt like stinging fire, but the most dangerous part of her spell was rendered powerless by the energy of the red crystal, leaving him relatively untouched. Quote opened his eyes after the spell had fizzled out and checked himself over for injuries. There were none. He made a soft, disapproving sound with his mouth and raised his weapon again. Striding forwards, he came close enough to touch her if he so wanted to. He no longer sounded amused and condescending. Now he just sounded mad. "A fool who would forget her master does not deserve to live."

Quote came to her and she did not resist. He prized her green malachite stave from her shaking fingertips and tossed it to the ground, hearing the instrument rolling carelessly away. He knew that without it she would not be able to cast any spells strong enough to hurt him. The red crystal and the general toughness of his body prevented that. He was both Quote _and_ the Doctor, so he knew his personal limitations. "Misery," he said at last, regretfully, pressing the barrel of the Polar Spur right beneath the swell of her breasts, tilted upwards so that the trajectory would split her heart in two, "this is the day that you die."

He released the trigger.

She did not have time to scream. The pure white laser that the Polar Spur emitted did not burn a hole through her so much as it cut her cleanly in half. The intense heat of the ray cauterized the wound immediately after it was made, so there was no unexpected splash of blood. It was a shame, really. He had hoped to have seen some blood, as red as the crystal that beat within him. He found he quite liked the colour red. Misery choked, trying to find her lungs that were no longer there. Quote pushed her over and her body fell to the ground, separated into two different chunks. She had a look of surprise on her face, like the pain that had overcome her was simply too much for her to bear. It didn't matter now. She was gone.

The robot rubbed the side of his wrist against the barrel of his gun, checking to see if it had overheated or not. It was warm, but not hot enough to suggest a burnout. He didn't really think that the gunsmith would repair his weapon for a second time, not when the presence of the other was in his body and using it as it saw fit. This was a good weapon, maybe he should try and make his own upgrades from now on. He was a doctor, that sort of thing was easily within his ability. Quote slung the gun back into its place on his belt and turned away from his disobedient servant, placated.

A small rock struck the side of his face hard and startled him, knocking his red cap clear off his head. He slapped a hand to his temple and expected to feel the slick burn of blood from his own body, but had to remind himself that this was a body that did not bleed. Kneeling, he scooped up his hat again and put it back on again, because although the Doctor held no real attachments to it, his little host did, and so he found himself sharing similar affections. He had done more than simply read all of Quote's personal files, he had had no choice but to integrate them into his own awareness.

The second rock Sue threw missed, while the third one struck him hard in the shoulder. She was trying to hurt him, but all she seemed to be doing was catching his attention. The mimiga girl had no other weapons but this, and she was too full of pride to run away. She was the only one left who could stop him. "Go away!" She cried harshly, picking up whatever projectiles she could find and hurling them at the robot. "I don't want this robot! I want the nice one back! The nice one! Get lost!" When her supply of rocks and stones were exhausted, she was reduced to hurling chunks of Quote's broken body back at him, the fragments bouncing off him harmlessly. He was letting her do it, calmly waiting for her to run out of steam.

When all her ammunition was spent, the robot before her eyes began to walk towards her at a leisurely pace, his face totally unreadable. He had never looked so much like a machine as he did now. Sue was caught between standing her ground and running away, knowing that if she ran she'd at least have a small chance of surviving. But running away was cowardice. She was no coward!

He had not drawn his weapon yet, and it did not look like he was going to. Still, Sue's survival instincts won over her sense of pride and she turned tail and ran, fleeing the area where the island's core was kept. Quote had been waiting for this. The moment Sue fled, he threw his power into overdrive and sprinted towards her, running like a clockwork athlete. He caught up to her in only a few seconds and his arm shot out to grab onto the back of her little blue shirt, yanking her up from off the ground. Quote braked suddenly and held up his prize, dangling and squirming and crying curses.

Treading air with her little mimiga feet, Sue felt an undeniable desire to bite his hand and to not let go. Smiling, Quote moved his grip on her a little, so that each of his hands held a pinch of her shirt and the small shoulder that was beneath it. It nearly looked like he was going to hang her up as laundry. "What's wrong with you?" The girl squeaked, still hardly believing what had happened around her. Quote was supposed to be their savior. Now he was their enemy. "That crystal isn't you!"

Quote grinned, or rather, flashed his teeth at her. Whatever she was trying to convince him of fell on dead ears. "You're not leaving this place alive." He said simply, as a fact.

In the beginning, Quote's body had been designed to function under extreme pressure and duress. Like an ant, he held the capability to lift up to nine times his own weight. This may not seem like much when one considers that Quote is a relatively small robot, but he was built out of heavy metal just as much as he was also built from rubber and plastic. Each of his arms could pull about one and a half tons each. Compared to a human being, that kind of strength was phenomenal.

The other in Quote's body was amazed at the amount of strength that he was able to conjure up. Both of his plastic hands clamped down more firmly on Sue's little shoulders, gripping like a tight vice. The girl whimpered, and then screamed as she felt her collarbones snap under the pressure. It was like breaking a wishbone. Beginning to cry and hating herself for doing so, Sue wished that she had the energy left to raise one of her hands and give him the finger. The Doctor was in him, and he deserved it. "Doctor Dumb can go screw himself." She said, and then sighed.

Snarling, Quote pulled his arms away from one another and ripped her in two. The break wasn't even, he wound up tearing one of her arms out of its sockets and snapping away most of her shoulder, strung together by bits of tendon and muscle. Mimigas weren't very strong until the red flower rage took them, but this one in particular was admirably well built. He had dissected and studied their remains often, so he knew.

Blood spewed out of the new wound and splattered the marble floor a dull red, thick and sticky and strong. The artery that was meant to be attached to Sue's missing arm spat blood of its own and wound up coating Quote's front in the red substance, the robot standing still and watching with fascination as the liquid started out remarkably warm and began to cool. It felt odd.

Sue coughed a little and moaned, but it wasn't long until she too was gone. At least she had not died with as much fear in her heart as Misery had. The robot let go of her body and her arm and looked at his gloved hand, which was webbed with the splatterings of mimiga blood. The power in this body was amazing. He should have considered a cybernetic body sooner! "My…" He murmured, a little annoyed that his voice had to sound so young, but understanding that one had to take the bad with the good. His cultured tone and the voice of Quote didn't quite match. "This is marvelous!"

He was not alone. Somewhere within the back of his mind, like a nasty aftertaste, the original consciousness of the machine was still screaming, going into hysterics, throwing a tantrum like a disobedient child. It still seemed to have no clear idea of what was happening to it, and he supposed he could be kind to it and let it bleed into his thoughts, just as the same had happened to him. He was also quite sure that a part of the little robot knew _exactly_ what was happening to him, but chose not to accept it. Denial often left one muted in the dark. Quote's mind was hardly even a bother once he turned down the volume quite a bit.

Quote wiped his hands on his pants and adjusted the tilt of his hat a little. Once he had the Earth under his control, a more fitting wardrobe change was in order. Now there was no rush. There was nobody left to stop him. He looked down at the body of the dead mimiga girl and wanted to spit on it.

"Everything will continue according to plan." He intoned, and then teleported away.


	2. The Second Law, Thou Shalt Obey

_Thou shalt obey._

The day grew to night and yet nothing happened. Everything stayed as it was before, expectant, still. The Doctor had not yet unleashed his army upon the Earth, yet Quote had not returned from the balcony above. Had he been killed along the way? If so, why hadn't the Doctor acted? Had a stalemate been reached? There was no way for the remnant residents of the Plantation to know. They had given it their all, now all they had to do was wait. Momorin Sakamoto and Itoh the engineer were camped out above their secretive hideout, no longer needing to remain inconspicuous. They had to stay closely around their rocket and protect it, for they would need it themselves to escape. Two bedrolls were laid out beside a burning campfire, giving illumination to an area that was usually pitch black at night.

A green-haired woman and a thin-looking mimiga were swaddled in their blankets, waiting out the night and knowing that they should sleep, but not having the inclination to do so. If anything took a turn for the worse they would not be able to notice it in their sleep. They were too edgy to sleep anyway. Momorin looked up towards the ceiling. Vaguely she could make out the shapes and outlines of the upper platforms above them, but it was too indistinct. She wished she could see the stars. All campouts deserved stars.

Her children had gone away from her and had followed their own paths to get off the island, and she could not control them, not in such a dangerous place as this. They had come here as researchers, but there were preparing to leave here as fighters. Kazuma had always resembled herself, a calm thoughtful boy who often tried to stay on top of the situation whenever he could. He was elsewhere on the island, formulating his own plan of escape. One of his rare and infrequent communications had mentioned dragons. Whatever he was doing, it was apt to be interesting.

Sue was different, though. She had always resembled her father, who had always been a fireblood up until the time he had passed away. She would try to save her skin and if possible, the skins of all those around her at the same time. She was not even _meant_ to have come on this research trip at all, but if she had stayed behind there would have been nobody left to take care of her. Sue was strong, but she was still only just a little girl, not quite ready for the entire world just yet.

Sue… was she alright? Momorin had an awful feeling that something was terribly wrong. It showed up easily on her face as she stared up into the empty spaces, and then into the fire at her feet. Wherever she was, Momorin could only hope that somebody trustworthy was looking after her.

Itoh looked up from the very weakly brewed coffee that he had made over the fire. His supplies were running pitifully low and this thin drink was the best that he could manage. Even though he was now a mimiga, his love for coffee had not dwindled. His love for _many_ things had not dwindled. He glanced over at his fellow researcher and noticed that she had barely touched her own cup of coffee. "You should drink that up if you want to be awake for the evacuation." He advised carefully, worried for her, but also wondering why she looked so worried herself.

Momorin heard his words and mechanically picked up her cup, holding it in her warming hands but not taking a drink out of it. "My mothers intuition is acting up like crazy, Itoh. I'm afraid something terrible might have happened to Sue. It's only a feeling I have, but I've learnt to trust my feelings a lot over the years." The female researcher was technically talking to her friend, but Itoh knew that she was mostly talking to herself. All he need do was listen to her. She stared down into her coffee, which looked more like very dirty water. "She's a mimiga now, just like you. What if she had been forced to eat a red flower? What would we do if she has?"

"Now now Momorin, we don't even know if the red flowers work on humans who have been turned into mimigas. We've never tested it before, and I really hope we never have to." As for her 'feelings', Itoh knew never to try and explain them away. He had seen them come out as true time and time again. You could always count on it. But where would that leave Sue? He hoped that she would be wrong, just this one time. Just enough to keep her daughter safe.

"In case _you_ have to be the test subject?" Momorin said wryly, knowing that her friend had always been the textbook example of timidity. He had always been like that, even before the lecture she had met him at, many years ago. She could not picture this thin fluffy creature going on a wild rampage, no matter what kind of influence he was under. To this date caffeine was the strongest drug that he had ever been under the control of. Momorin smiled, her eyes softening. "Nobody would ever be able to use you as a weapon, Itoh."

"I am very grateful for that." He replied, relaxing. He wondered what it would be like, to completely lose one's mind and to simply be an empty vessel for destruction. It was a sobering thought. Hesitantly Itoh rubbed at his nose a little and added; "it's always at times like this that I wish that Jin was still around, here, with us. He always knew exactly what to do." Momorin looked up at him silently, then diverted her gaze to the side. The thin mimiga backtracked a little, mindful of his tact. "I'm sorry, Momorin. I didn't mean to bring it up so casually…"

"It's been five years. Don't worry about it. You don't have to speak of my husband so tentatively. You knew him almost as well as I did." If Itoh had been closer Momorin would have touched him affectionately on the shoulder. The three of them, Momorin, Itoh and Jin had progressed through their different scientific careers together, as the very best of friends. Itoh had watched his two closest friends fall in love, get married and have children. It had been a beautiful and uplifting time of their lives.

Then, five years ago, Jin had been killed in his workshop from a miscalculation in one of his projects. It had been tragic, and for a long time it seemed like the Sakamoto family would not recover from it, but Momorin had said her good-byes to the past and had led herself and her children into the future. It was a strength, Itoh had guessed, that she must have picked up from Jin just before he died.

Slowly, Itoh brought forward the idea that had been sneaking around about the back of his mind. He thought it might have just been a coincidence, but he wanted to see if his companion thought the same. "I remember that Jin was a roboticist. He created lots of different versions of robots for the government. He always thought that creating true life from unlife was the greatest power that a man could ever achieve. Do you remember that?"

Momorin smiled and nodded, taking a small sip of her lukewarm coffee. Jin had had his robots, and also his very own children to show for that. "Yes, I remember it." She said.

"Then…" The mimiga muttered, wondering how his friend was going to take this information. "That robot, the one who has sworn to protect this island and the people on it. Don't you think he looked a lot like Jin, back when the three of us had just gotten into college? I know it's been a long time since then and my memory might be questionable, but to me, that robot is the spitting image of him."

The female researcher did the exact opposite of what Itoh had predicted her to do and nodded, understanding perfectly what he thought. "I agree." She answered, wondering where that robot was and what he was doing now. "He looks just like my husband, or what he used to look like a very long time ago. When he knocked on the door of my hideout and spoke the correct password, when I opened the door to him it shocked me so greatly because I thought for the barest second that Jin had returned. It's silly, isn't it?" Momorin shivered, the fire and the blanket not enough to shut out the cold and her memories.

Itoh frowned and stood up, shaking off the woven blanket that was around his shoulders. He padded around the campfire and knelt beside his friend, drawing his blanket around her to shut out the cold. "It's not silly at all. Here, you're shivering. Does this feel better?" He asked.

"It does, but what about you, Itoh? You'll catch a chill…"

"I'll be alright. It doesn't look like much, but this fur that I'm covered in is remarkably warm. I can barely feel the chill at all." Not bothering to go back to his original spot by the fire, Itoh took a seat right next to his friend. It was easier to talk to her from here, and even though he was possibly sitting too close for a mere friend to be, the timid engineer felt that wherever he was, the spirit of Momorin's husband would not mind. The mimiga sighed. "So now we know who that robot's creator probably is. How do you feel about it?"

"How I feel about anything doesn't matter anymore when it comes to surviving on this island." She snuggled further down into her blankets, closing her eyes. "Yet even so, I feel like some small part of Jin has come back, and that even now he is trying to protect us. We, who have started this whole mess in the first place. Do we even deserve such protection?"

Itoh stared down at his white hands. They were weak and practically useless, even more so then when he had been human. What could he do with them now? "Momo." He said tenderly, using the name he and Jin had given her back when she had been young, wide-eyed and beautiful. She was still beautiful now, but they had all aged a lot since then. "I know I've always been a coward. It's just who I am, but if worse comes to worse, if something happens and you get put in danger, I'll try my best to protect you. I'll fight anything, if I have to. I don't know if I'd be of any use, as weak as I am, but I'd still try. I would be brave for you, Momo."

She turned to look at him. He was still staring at his hands in embarrassment, but there was also a sense of resolution about him as well. He really meant it. That gave the woman a surge of hope that nothing else could have matched, not because of the protection that he would provide her, but because Itoh was willing to get over a part of himself that had made him a lonely and lacking man for such a long time. She felt love for him, and even pride. Momorin freed one hand from the confines of her blankets and patted him softly on the head, an action that was usually saved for the family pet, but she just couldn't help herself. "Thank you, Itoh." She smiled. "You've always been a good man."

Together, the two friends waited out the night.

xxx

She was curled up in her bed with her knees drawn up high enough to touch her chin, her arms wrapped tightly about her shins. Her flaxen hair was messed up and it had been a long time since she had last brushed it. Things had been hectic recently, rushing forwards to a point that ten years in the dark had been unable to prepare her for. Curly was honestly surprised that the sudden flow of new data and memories that had been reintroduced to her hard drive did not end up completely burning out her processor. For the longest time she had only been able to lie there, just as she was lying down now, trying to sort and designate each new file and place it where it was supposed to be. It had taken a herculean effort, and in the end it had exhausted her.

It was still exhausting her, but she felt filled, whole and complete. Compared to her database now, the robot that she had been was only a ghost of a mechanism, an empty shadow. She was useful now, she felt ready to serve, but Quote had left her here, because no matter how much information she knew, she was still essentially useless. Curly could not kill a human being, but their mission specifically called for that requirement. Quote was incomplete, but in that incompleteness there had been a loophole in which he could save the island. An order that one doesn't know one cannot obey.

Curly had not been able to tell him this directly. Her companion had been sent off into the monster's den with only the vaguest idea on why she could not follow, because if she spoke openly of the Three Laws in his presence, he might remember them himself, and it would all have been for nothing. He had to remain ignorant, an amnesiac, at least until the island was free. Talk about the blind leading the blind!

What had touched her the most was that Quote trusted her, he trusted her secrets and he had put his faith into the idea that he was the only one left who could succeed. He had bought into her exclamations that he was the savior, the one who would free the island for good. Everybody who had wished for freedom, for a peaceful life had put their hopes and dreams into him and had made him a vessel for their liberation. It sounded like such a terrible burden. If Curly had been in Quote's place, she knew she would have buckled under the pressure.

But it was long into the night now, way past any estimated time she had calculated for Quote to emerge victorious. It had been many long, tiresome hours since he had left. The Cthulhu who had pulled her out of the water had left as well, heartlessly calling her a waste of his time. She didn't care about that. All she wanted was to know what was going on. Robots did not quite understand the concept of a 'sixth sense' that many humans frequently talked about, but if Curly had been human enough to understand it, she would have known that her own sixth sense was running rampant, screaming at her from her neural matrix that something had gone _very_ wrong.

Quote had not left her here. He was going to come back to her, wasn't he?

She released her legs and sat up on the bed, brushing away her hair that had tangled about her face. It was far too dark for any human to see by, but Curly had activated her night vision after the sun above the island had gone down, leaving her entire world in an array of differentiating greens and shades of black. She could also see through heat vision as well, along with sonar, but this was simple, and also the best. She liked to be able to see as closely as a human could as possible. The robotic girl brushed her blankets aside and stood, removing something small and precious from the pocket of her pants.

The iron bond was their connection to one another, both as combat robots and as friends. When her memory had returned she had painstakingly crafted two trinkets that resembled one another, a tiny plaque that was small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, bearing the insignia of a human's heart. It had been her way of thanking him for bringing her out of the darkness, and also her way of keeping them together. Quote had one, and she had the other. Curly looked at her iron bond carefully, sitting within her cupped hands.

It had a hairline fracture upon it, dividing the little red heart in two.

The answer to her inner question was painfully obvious now. In the darkness of the night she bit her lip, feeling a cold shock of electricity running though her nervous system. Gently she ran her finger along the break, wondering how any outside force had managed to cause a crack in concentrated laconia. It was meant to be practically indestructible. Their own motherboards were supposed to be made out of the very same substance.

_He has failed then. But the bond hasn't broken yet, so he must still be alive up there, somewhere._

Curly Brace stuffed the bond deep into the pocket of her pants, not wanting to look at it again. It gave her the surges when she did. The girl knew that it was ludicrous to believe in silly, unexplainable phenomena, but something in her proverbial gut told her that it was right. That it was perfectly correct. Quote was in danger, and somehow, very soon, he would probably crash and not reactivate again.

_But I have the Three Laws. If it is a human that is hurting him, I won't be able to stop him, even if he is torturing Quote before my eyes. If I try to hurt a human I'll cease to function._

"But I'm gonna go anyway!" She exclaimed to herself out loud, in the making of an oath. He and her had been designed to function together no matter what, and that was what they were going to do. If Quote was hurt, she would try to repair him, and they would go after the Doctor together. There might still be time. The robotic girl turned and picked up her machine gun that was leaning carefully against the head of her bed, a huge weapon that was nearly as tall as she was. With her strength she could lift it easily. Curly unrolled the long body strap and fastened the tool to her back, so that she still had the use of her arms for climbing.

There was only one way out of Cthulhu's Crevasse. Running her fingers loosely through her hair to straighten it again, Curly set her foot on a large stone at the bottom of the gorge and began to climb, scaling the rocky wall as gracefully as a mountain goat. She was lifting her not inconsiderable weight over and over again as she climbed to the very top, while at the same time, she browsed her map system that was one of the rediscovered programs that she found in her database. There was nothing around her, nothing useful below her, so the only way to reach the balcony was directly upwards.

"Quote," she breathed through gritted teeth, focussing hard at her task at hand, "don't worry, I'm coming to help you!"

Soon, the sun would rise.

xxx

The combat robot materialized directly above his throne, dropping down a foot or so to stand gracefully on the monument's large stone headrest. The equalizers in his system were in superb working order, so his balance was nothing short of perfect. Smiling freely, Quote held a hand over his brow to look at the sunrise without the glare in his eyes, and the wide expanse of sky beyond. There were cities out there, countries too, that would be all his in only a matter of time. The small red scarf he was wearing tugged pleasantly in the breeze as he crouched a little, then jumped off the top of his throne to the stone floor below.

Sunrise from the balcony was always spectacular. Both parts of Quote thought it was beautiful, the human side feeling like this island was far closer to the sun than the surface was, so they were treated to a fiery orange sky lined with the remaining traces of dark night, dotted with barely visible stars. The clouds were bright pinks, the colour of cotton candy. All in all, it looked like something one would see in a grand oil painting, rather than real life. The robot side of Quote was startled out of his panic, having never seen a sunrise before in his entire life. He didn't know what it was. To him, it looked like the sky was burning and it confused him greatly.

Today was a big day for him, for them both. He was going to feed his mimiga army in the eve and unleash a plague of destruction upon the Earth in the dead of the night, so all the humans would be comfortably asleep in their beds, totally and completely unaware up until the moment in which they had their throats bitten out of their necks. Oh, how he had waited for this day!

For now, though, he was going to spend the day learning how to properly control his new body, and to figure out a way to dispose of his little host while he still had the free time to do so. He enjoyed this body very much, but having to carry a weak little secondary consciousness in his mind like a parasite was not too appealing to him. The night had been full of that voice's screams and wails.

Quote shrugged off the booster pack that was tightly strapped to his back and heard the large heavy piece of equipment clank to the ground, he would not need it anymore. Turning around to face it, he wrapped a hand around one of the arm straps and picked it up effortlessly, walking towards the very edge of the balcony. Below him and the stone platform was nothing, just empty open air. A sea of pink clouds covered up the green lands below. Quote held his arm out and dropped the piece of machinery, watching in an amused fashion as the booster fell out of sight and through the veil of mist.

_That pack… I needed it to climb places…_

It wasn't a scream. The voice was beginning to talk now. Perhaps it had gotten used to where it was. Quote went still as the robot made his meek little protest, then his mouth curved into a small smile and he wandered away from precipice. "I see you have finished screaming. We don't need it anymore." He replied a matter-of-factly and he felt the greater lightness about his body now that the pack was gone. "With the demon crown in our possession, unaided flight is easily within our reach. Doesn't that interest you?"

_But I destroyed the demon crown. It is in a hundred pieces upstairs._

"That is both correct and incorrect. I expect you _did_ smash it on the ground after you murdered my old body, but what is broken is easily fixed. If the demon crown really _was_ destroyed, how would I still be alive now? Come on little robot, I thought you were more intelligent than that." Quote lectured condescendingly, placing one hand on his hip with the other one raised and wagging a disapproving finger. "I don't really want to go upstairs where my rotting old body still lies, so I'll show you what I mean right here and now. Look up."

The both of them looked up. There was a stone ceiling above their heads, supported by many strong pillars that were scattered all around them. Quote sensed the presence where the most magical energy was gathering at and snapped his fingers once, sharply and loud enough to make a faint echo that danced all around the area. Only moments after that, a very small tinkling noise was heard and a single droplet fell from an invisible cloud to the floor. Quote walked towards it and crouched down, resting his elbows on his knees.

It was a broken fragment of the demon crown, the deep red monstrous eye that had been set in its very center. It was winking up at them evilly, unblinking and wicked. Quote picked it up and held it in the palm of his hand. It felt very warm, like it had been recently heated in a furnace. He began to twirl it deftly in between his fingers as he stood up again, eye side, blank side, eye side, blank side…

It started to rain. The floor began to tinkle and sing to its own beat of music as other small fragments began to appear, bouncing and rolling about until it was time to sit still. Quote was standing in the middle of the storm, yet no broken pieces chose to fall against his body. They had more sense than that. The sequence of the falling pieces were lovely, making it sound like a twisted and immoral lullaby.

Like very powerful magnets, the pieces of the crown began to attract one another, creeping along the ground into the center, right in front of Quote's feet. They went slowly like bugs crawling across the ground, then they heaped themselves into a little broken pile of shards. The pile began to move, then shift within itself, trying to establish some kind of proper order. Pieces stuck together and combined as one, those combined pieces finding another similar to it and then combining to _that_ one, until finally the unmistakable shape of the demon crown was sitting regally on the ground, a gaping empty hole in the center of its brow.

Quote dropped the red eye he was holding and it flew swiftly towards the last piece of the puzzle, completing it triumphantly. All the tiny cracks in the body of the crown glowed bright white for a moment, and then were suddenly gone. The red eye blinked once, lazily flicking its lashes, and opened wide once more. Quote knelt and picked up the crown, holding it carefully in both hands. "Voila." He said, smiling smugly.

The only reply that came from his host was a low feeling of despair.

xxx

The grass was coated with morning dew and it glistened brightly in the fresh air, causing the ground to look like it was painted over with a thin layer of misty crystals. Curly thought it was absolutely beautiful as she made her way through the verdant plantation, keeping one hand upon the strap of her gun just in case she needed to use it again in a hurry. She hadn't seen any nasty wildlife yet, so that was good. The robotic girl took a deep breath of fresh air. It felt just like going through a walk in the park. The only thing that would have made it perfect would be birdsong.

Only a few days ago this place had been run like a prisoner of war camp, the inhabitants being forced into the manual labor, growing and harvesting the forbidden red flowers that were destined to have driven them mad. Buds and broken stems of the plants still lay strewn about the plantation, but the blooming flowers had been picked, sorted and spirited away. It was so inherently saddening that the mimigas were creating the tools for their own destruction. If Curly had known and seen exactly what the place was like back before the population was taken away, she would not have been able to handle it. It would have been too much for her.

She knew this, so she tried not to think about it too much. Her processor sometimes crept back to that train of thought when she stopped paying attention, so she focussed all her thoughts upon the maps in her mind, the maps of the plantation, the pathway to the balcony, and the balcony itself. Curly had been walking for about an hour now, after she had climbed to the edge of Cthulhu's Crevasse. Soon she would reach the very center of the plantation.

There was a rocket-powered platform installed upon the crest of the hill, placed in the perfect spot where it would easily propel her up to where the path to the balcony lay. Climbing, jumping or using a booster pack just would not suffice. Quote must have used this same rocket the day before. Curly fell to her knees on the platform and looked around for the switch, finding it nestled carefully on a control panel just below the edge of the platform. Her questing fingers sought to flip the switch and send her far into the sky, where she would be able to continue with her plans in rescuing Quote. At the very last moment, though, she heard a gentle snore emanate from the other side of the hill, the sound of somebody enjoying a pleasant sleep.

Curiosity would up getting the better of her. Curly stood up from the rocket and quietly made her way down the hill, coming to a small and hastily made campsite. The fire was nothing more than a pile of soot and charcoal, but lying beside it all wrapped up in blankets was a green haired middle-aged woman. Judging from the small peeks of her clothing here and there from under the blankets, she appeared to be wearing a white lab jacket. A researcher, then. Beside her sleeping form, curled up and cuddled against her breast, was a strange looking mimiga who was also wearing a strikingly similar lab jacket. He was snoring a little, but not loud enough to wake the woman beside him.

Curly smiled, then pressed a hand to her mouth to keep herself from giggling out loud. It looked so cute! Were these the people who owned the rocket platform? If so, it would only be right for her to ask their permission before she blasted off, or else she would feel bad for it later. It would be like stealing. Utilizing as much grace as she could, Curly tiptoed to the woman and mimiga's side and settled down onto her knees, inspecting the thin mimiga very closely. She took a hold of his shoulder and shook him lightly, trying to wake him up.

He mumbled something indistinct and rolled over, away from his companion and into Curly's lap. She hesitated, and then becoming a little annoyed, sharply flicked one of his large floppy ears with two of her fingers. "Wake up!" She hissed, still trying to keep her voice lowered. "I really need to speak to you!"

The mimiga flicked his ear back to where it was supposed to be and opened his eyes groggily, mumbling and beginning to yawn. His hands came up to rub sleepily at his eyes and his blurred vision cleared, showing to him the unfamiliar visage of a plastic and rubber face with audio sensors and a lot of blonde hair, along with two shockingly blue eyes. The face looked particularly annoyed at him. "Get out of my lap." She said dully.

Itoh's mind made a very basic mental connection and he screamed. Fur standing on end, he threw himself out of Curly's lap and fell onto his back, scooting away with his hands and feet. "Ahhh! Killer robots!" He cried, trying to get as far away from her as possible.

Curly blinked, a little confused at his strangely violent outburst. "I'm not a killer…" She began, but then was cut off as the green-haired woman from before rose from her sleep, awakened by Itoh's cries, thought as fast as she could and hefted a small tough pebble directly at Curly head. It struck her audio sensor painfully hard and caused a shock of electricity to burst in her system, the equivalent of mild pain. The robotic girl cried out softly and rubbed at her head, hoping that the sensor had not been damaged. She _needed_ it to listen to people.

Rising to his feet and scuttling behind the woman and shaking, Itoh watched the robot wince from Momorin's precision assault and then raise her hands slowly, a gesture that meant she had given up. Momorin tugged her blankets away and stood up tall, another spare stone still in her hand in case she had to attack again. They were weak weapons, but they seemed to be effective ones. "Who goes there? Who are you?" She demanded boldly.

"I'm not a killer robot." Curly repeated, hoping they would listen to her this time. "I'm a friend. I won't hurt any of you, promise. Cross my heart and hope to die. I just wanted to wake you up so I could talk to the both of you." The woman squinted her eyes a little, looking over the girl closely. Slowly she lowered the hand that had been holding the rock, then tossed it to the side. Curly let out a sigh of relief, and then gratefully lowered her arms. She was practically unarmed anyway. The only way for her to equip her machine gun was to do it while she was standing up.

Momorin stepped forward and sunk to her knees as well, the woman looking rather mussed up from only recently waking up, but she looked to be in a very reliable frame of mind. Itoh was holding both his hands to his mouth anxiously, as if trying to hold all his worry and fear inside. "Be careful, Momo!" He called, but that was the bravest thing he could do.

"Green audio sensors, the same build, the same size, basically the same shape," Momorin gently took a hold of Curly right arm and raised it, checking the very small barcode that was tattooed on the back of her upper arm, "the same series number, too. You are that other little robot's friend, aren't you?"

She brightened immediately, smiling. "You know Quote! Yes! I'm his friend, my name is Curly Brace!"

The female researcher let go of her arm and smiled as well, only now realizing that she looked an absolute mess. She started to brush her hair down that was sticking up in every which way, like a haystack. "So Quote is his name, hm? How strangely fitting. I'm sorry I struck you with that stone, dear. I thought you were one of the Doctor's henchmen and that you were going to take Itoh away. With Kazuma and Sue gone, he's the only companion I have left." Momorin turned to her friend and beckoned to him warmly. "Come on, Itoh. She's not going to bite."

He was still trembling a little from his unwelcome wake-up call. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather stay right here." He quavered.

"It takes more than a single rock to hurt me. I was built to be tough and strong." Curly reassured the woman cheerily, clasping her hands together. "I'm sorry I scared your friend, but it's important that I borrow your rocket just for a little bit." Her sunny demeanor drained out of her body as she spoke her next few words. "You see, I think that something bad has happened to Quote up in the balcony, and I want to check and see if he's alright. I'm worried for him."

"Yes," Momorin agreed, "if everything had gone smoothly, the mimigas would be free by now. Instead everything seems so expectant, so still. It is as if the whole island is waiting for something terrible to happen." The researcher stood, and Curly copied her. Raising a hand to her chin in thought, Momorin wondered what that terrible thing could be. They had all worked so hard to secure their lives. "Do you think Quote might be dead?"

Curly shook her head, at least certain of _that_ fact. "No. He isn't dead yet. That's why I have to go to him as soon as possible. Please, can I use your rocket ship?" Momorin nodded and kindly took the robot's wrist, leading her up the hillside. Itoh stayed behind and started to clear up the campsite, hoping that time and a little bit of work would erase his nasty bout of the shakes.

When the mimiga looked up at them while he was rolling up the blankets, he got the distinct impression that it was like watching a mother leading her daughter to a place of great fear and terror, but where emotional growth would take root and flourish. Curly stood on the platform and was about to kneel down and flip the switch herself, but Momorin ushered her hands away. "You have to stand up tall if you want to fly high. That sort of advice is true in many ways than one. Good luck with saving your friend." She flipped the switch.

"Thank you, Mrs. Sakamoto. Jin would have been proud of you."

Momorin gasped slightly and looked upwards, surprised that the female robot had spoken those names. How did she know her name, and how did she know her husband as well?

It was too late to wonder now, for Curly was already gone.

xxx

"I get the subtle feeling that you are hiding something from me." Quote said.

The throne room was empty and cold winds from the motions of the floating island produced a constant chilly breeze. It had annoyed the Doctor in the past, but now it felt just fine. The throne was far too big for his new robotic body, but he managed it anyway, despite feeling like a small child who had crept into the larger seat of his father. His feet did not even touch the ground. Quote was sitting down calmly and looking deeply into himself, his central processing unit and the section of undefined space and time that his neural matrix had created to imprison his host. It was impossible to see into that darkness, or to be more precise, lack of data, but behind that black curtain somewhere lay the consciousness of the machine, blinded and held in chains.

Quote had the reformed demon crown resting in his lap, which he was absently stroking as if it was a pet dog or a cat. As long as it was close to him he could draw power from it, but he was slightly afraid to put it on again, not after it had nearly driven him to the brink of madness the first time. Besides, if he put the crown on again there was a good chance that the robot inside of him might start screaming again, and it was only recently that he had managed to get him quieted down. He needed the robot to be receptive now. To be quiet, to listen, and to speak. Just like a good little slave.

"It is not much, mind you, only one or two personal files that you have somehow managed to keep from me. Tell me, little robot, did you lock-and-key these files at the precise moment in which I began to rape your mind? What importance do they have to you? I should like to know." Quote said out loud, knowing that he could speak easily to the consciousness inside of him with a silent tongue, but the words seemed all the more valid and powerful when spoken into the air. Nobody would see him talking to himself, anyhow.

He expected silence, as the little robot had only had just enough time to come to terms with the theft of his body and his predicament. Quote could picture the machine now, sprawled and alone on the floor of his own prison, bewildered, far too tired now even to scream. It was almost as if he was there, drawing aside the curtain, looking through the bars. The red crystal in his chest glowed warmly in the lack of natural light. "You can tell me if you want to." Quote murmured in a gentle tone. "There's no use in keeping secrets from me. Talk. You know it is your duty to obey."

A dualistic stirring in Quote's processor, or inside of him, a tiny voice from the darkness called out, low and soft; _There is nothing. There are a lot of things that I can't remember. What you are looking at is corrupted data._

Upon his marble stone throne Quote smiled, his eyes half closed in seeming tiredness or thought. He knew he was lying. "Think rationally, little robot." He explained in a simple manner. "You can keep things from me if you wish, but in the end it will all amount to nothing. I know there is nothing that can stop me now, but I wonder if you know that too? Or do you disagree with me, and _that_ is why you locked up these small secrets?"

_You will not escape from this. Somebody will come and they will stop you. They will. They **will**._

He removed the Polar Spur from his belt and held it in his hands. "You are sure? Then who are they?"

Silence.

"I anticipated that you wouldn't talk to me. Do you think that just because you don't have a body anymore I cannot hurt you without damaging myself? You would be so _very _wrong. I raped your mind once, and I can do it again, and again, and again, until that makeshift wall you have built will come crashing down upon you. Then I will know _everything_, whether you like it or not. Wouldn't you rather avoid the pain and obey me?" He felt a sense of defiance coming from where the machine's mind was. Haughty, righteous defiance. He was not going to talk, or for now he believed that to be so

He clenched his mind hard around.that sense of defiance, as hard as a curled fist or a closed hanging noose. He felt himself penetrating the other small consciousness, drawing inwards and occupying him. He heard the machine scream and try to pull away, but there was nowhere else for him to retreat to, for the Doctor was within him, and all around him too. He screamed again, but lower this time, ending up as something of a ragged sob. The palpable sense of defiance turned itself inside out and became the acknowledgement of pain, shame and despair.

Quote slid off the throne and carefully set the demon crown down where he had been sitting, knowing that he'd go back to it later when this little task was complete. He couldn't really deny the fact that making the little robot scream made him feel extra _good_ inside. It was remarkably satisfying. He took the safety off his weapon and walked away from the throne a little, facing into the winds. Raising his free hand and holding it upwards, he made a small gesture that Misery would have been familiar with and materialized one of the mimigas from upstairs into the air in front of him. He watched the creature flop down on the ground and look up at him with an expression of bewilderment and surprise.

The files that were guarded by the original Quote remained locked and closed. That was to be expected. This was only the beginning. Quote cocked his head a bit, as if the tilt would enable him to think a little better. Likewise he pulled out from the robot's mind slightly, just enough so that he would be able to pay attention when he spoke. "Every time that I do this, I will begin to know you just a little bit better. Soon I will know _everything_. Are you listening to me?"

_Stop it! Please, whatever you're doing to me just stop it now! I can't take it anymore, it hurts!_

He looked at the mimiga that was beginning to pick itself up from off of the ground. It was typical of its species, small, white and pathetic. Nonchalantly he pointed his weapon at it and the mimiga froze just as a weak threatened creature was wont to do in times of distress. Quote knew who it was, because the little robot knew as well. It had lived in Grasstown, and a short while ago it had lost its keys. Now it was probably going to lose its brains out the back of its head. "If this pain you feel right now isn't enough for you to obey, each time I ask you a question and you refuse, I shall execute one of the mimigas that you wish to save."

The surge of emotion that came from the trapped robot was so great that Quote literally felt something rip apart inside of him and latch onto the circuitry that controlled his lingual unit. "_No!_" He cried in a voice that was loud, tormented and in pain. It touched upon his physical body for a single moment and then was gone, a blind swipe from the dark.

Quote blinked at the word that had not been his and the smiled nastily, back in control once more. "Is that a no against me not killing Santa, or a no meaning that you shall not talk?" He started to power up his gun, the energy cylinders beginning to grow warm.

_No! _Screamed the voice. _No! No! No!_

It sounded like it was broken, replaying the same short message over and over again. Quote felt that he was going to drive the little robot to insanity if he didn't stop soon, but he was _not_ going to be the one to back down first. Santa backed away a few steps, his hands held up in a manner that begged not to be shot. The mimiga's fur was standing on end. "Hey…" Santa said in a low, masculine quaver. "Can't we talk this out? Put the gun down, buddy."

The mimiga yelped right before Quote released the trigger, vaporizing him on the spot. The smell of burning fur rose from the newly formed crater on the ground. There was not even a trace of the creature left. Quote opened the bolt of his gun and inspected the cylinders casually, then snapped it closed again. "You could have saved his life, you know." He murmured regretfully. "But instead you chose to be selfish. Next time I shall select a mimiga child. I have acquired plenty of them from the Sand Zone..."

The smaller consciousness was paralyzed, silent, holding its breath. Perhaps it was thinking things over. Finally it rose up and said; …_The throne. Go back to the throne. I want to sit down…_

It was not much of a request, so he decided to carry it out respectfully. Quote went and sat down, placing the demon crown in his lap lovingly. Kindly he removed all the pressure from the little robot's consciousness. He almost heard the robot sigh in relief. That was right. It was _so_ much easier to just give in. "You refuse to show me two pieces of your accessible memory. I wish to know of them. Will you obey me?"

…_I will…_

"You will what?"

_I will obey you._

"'I will obey you, master.'" He corrected arrogantly.

There was a very long pause, and right when Quote thought the little robot had changed his mind, he heard quietly;

_I will obey you… master._

He had become a good little slave indeed. The protection over the two forbidden files was finally deactivated. They were opened up smoothly and methodically, a memory that was recent and sweet to him. If it were not for the torture and the threats, Quote felt that the machine probably would have never shown these files to anybody else. But he was exhausted now and ravaged, pushed to the edge and losing hope. For now he was too hurt, too beaten to care anymore. He was an innocent consciousness no more.

Quote could have read the files all by himself now, but he preferred to have it spoken to him by the wounded voice inside of him. It made the victory all the more sweeter. _There is a second savior who was sent to this island with me ten years ago. Her name is Curly Brace and she is as I am, a combat robot. I have failed, but where I have failed she will succeed, because she is stronger than I am. When I do not return she will come here and kill you._

"And the second file?" A reluctant silence. He pressed his will against him again and the robot felt pain briefly, but did not cry out as he usually did. His mind was most likely becoming unfocused from the torment. "If she is coming then we will just have to be prepared for her. It's not a problem for us. Now, what is the second file?"

_Curly Brace… she is… not like me. She knows… she knows them… she knows them all. I'm sorry, Curly… She knows, and she understands the programming that makes her complete. She can't kill humans. She can't hurt them at all…_

…_Ugh… kyaaaaaaa…_

The voice in his head appeared to have fainted. Quote was relieved, it had been beginning to bug him. "Right." He said coolly, picking up the crown. "We will have fun destroying her. Rest now. I will make sure that you are watching, my friend. I know _every_ byte of you now."

Quote smiled and took off his hat. Then, reverently, he placed the demon crown upon his head.


	3. The Third Law, Thou Shalt Survive

_Thou shalt survive._

Kazuma woke to the low rumbling snore, and the distinctive smell of a dragon. He raised his head from the bright green belly that he had been using as a pillow and looked about groggily, seeing only the steel-riveted outer wall and the wide expanse of air beyond. Heights didn't bother him, in fact, he loved them to death, and so any rush of vertigo that he should have felt fell upon an unfeeling body. The young biologist rose from the mass of green dragon that he had been sleeping on and yawned, spreading his arms wide and stretching.

By the angle of the sun in the sky, or more accurately, by Kazuma's wristwatch, it was roughly about ten 'o clock in the morning. He had risen late, practically everybody else on the island must have been up by now. His new pet sky dragon opened one lazy eye and peered at him as the young man climbed over its body, half curious on what was going on. When the human's movements didn't suggest that a meal was rapidly going to appear, it shut its eye again and sighed deeply, trying to find sleep once more.

"I'm sorry Puff, I don't have any breakfast for you right now." Kazuma murmured, rubbing a little at his eyes and stepping carefully towards the edge of the outer wall. He blinked a little as he looked up, wondering what was going on. It was common for Sue to leave him out of her big plans for the future, and half the time Kazuma had to figure out what the heck she was up to by himself, but he had expected some kind of big change to have come over the island by now. Today seemed to be no different from yesterday, but his robotic friend had already left for the plantation above his head.

He sunk to the floor and stretched his legs out over the edge, dangling them thousands of feet above the surface of the planet. It was cold around the outer wall and the areas above it, where oxygen was a touch lighter than usual, practically impossible for one to notice unless they were a human being. Kazuma still felt it, the empty sensation of the air around him not being rich enough for his lungs, but he had learnt to ignore it by now. Apparently the mimigas and the other creatures on the island didn't realise it at all. Whether Kazuma was evolved for it or not, he still felt cold.

Puff crept up to Kazuma and sniffed at his neck, blowing a warm dragon breath over his body. It felt _so_ wonderful. The dragon lay down again, resting its head against the biologist's side. He fondly scratched it behind the ear. The frequent rushes of hot air were making it a lot easier to think.

No contacts, no messages, not even a word from his family and his friends. It worried him a little, but he knew that in the long run he'd have to take care of himself, first and foremost. He had Puff, his magic dragon, so he already had his ticket off the island and his route to freedom. If anything changed for the worse, even slightly, he knew it would be time to go. He hated doing it, but if that happened, his sister, his mother and his friends were on their own. He knew he was being terribly selfish, but he had to do what he had to do.

He estimated that he could wait for another hour, maybe two, and at the very latest, three. Then he would be gone.

xxx

The Doctor had once had a marvelous scientific laboratory hidden deeply within the heart of the island, accessible only by the teleportation magic of the demon crown. It had been a reliable safe house for all the former owners of the crown, and now him too. He had turned it into an amazing inner sanctum of research and knowledge. The only light available to him was from candle and torchlight, as there was no windows or a door. Solid bedrock was all around him, except for the useful volcanic bubble that had become this room. Empty cages were lined along the walls, only recently vacated. The Doctor had wanted to study the physiology of the Mimiga, and he had done so invasively, with the probe and the scalpel.

The remains had been fed to the ones that had already been tempered with the red flower solution, and it pleased him greatly to see the creatures chew and gnaw on the bones of their own brethren, their parents, their children, perhaps even their mates. If this was not true power, then nothing else was. Chemistry sets and boxes of mechanical tools were placed upon and around his main work bench, here and there scattered about the organised chaos were notebooks and manuals, dictating where and how each tool and chemical should be used.

He had used to write up these guides himself using his own pen, but he was working to a definite deadline now and each fleeting moment to him was astoundingly precious. A published guide written by another would suffice for now. Alfred Lanning's primer of robot biology was becoming a godsend to him, detailing all the many functions of the robot body and its systems. It was like relearning basic anatomy all over again.

Quote's intellectual receptors made complicated reading a breeze. All he had to do was flip a page of the book and stare at it for only a second, then his robotic neural matrix would absorb the information like a sponge, words, diagrams and all. It was not just a photographic memory, it was a _vampiric_ memory. By the time he was finished with browsing through the yellowed manual, he was almost completely confident that he could build a fully automated robot for himself if he wanted to, nearly from absolute scratch. Remarkable!

In his haste he had also grabbed a copy of Susan Calvin's 'Robopsychology', a science he hadn't known existed until he had seen it printed upon the cover of the book. As he opened it, he had seen the lightly pencilled name; _Jin Sakamoto _written carefully in the corner of the blank opening page. That woman, the rocket-scientist's late husband. This was the trinket of a dead man. Quote flipped through it briefly, found nothing in particular that would help in his little experiment, then cast it to the side. It was a useless piece of junk, merely examples on how robots had loopholed their way around the Three Laws over and over again. Neither he, nor the robot that was still lying unconscious in his mind obeyed those little piddling laws anyway.

Speaking of that robot, it seemed like wearing the demon crown upon his head was keeping it in an exhausted coma-like state. Perhaps the thought of wearing the object he had been ordered to destroy was forcing him to overload. Quote wouldn't have been surprised, and besides, only one mind could utilize the power of the demon crown, not two.

He sort of liked the empty presence that the crown was delivering him, but he would no doubt take it off again when the female robot came, just so his little friend would be able to watch her die. After that, the robot could look forward to a lifetime of long comas under the power of the demon crown, and then helplessness and violations whenever Quote felt like it, or whenever he wanted to be amused and satisfied. Eternity was a _very_ long time.

He had been repairing himself as best as he could without a second pair of hands to do so. It was difficult, but manageable. Using a thin pair of pliers and taking the very greatest of care, Quote tied off all the severed wiring and circuitry that had been damaged by the intrusion and was leaking away unnecessary amounts of power. They were mostly superfluous, not vital now that evil magics were his new source of power.

He sealed the breaks and the large hole that had been made in his chest with a fast-setting liquid rubber, sealing the ruby sparkle of the red crystal firmly into his artificial flesh. It was an effective repair, he thumped himself softly on the front gently a few times to test it out, and when he was satisfied with that he painted over the rubber with a shade that matched Quote's skin colour as well as he could. Now he looked nearly brand new. Seamless.

Quote pulled his ripped dark shirt back on over his head and smiled, clearing away a new empty space for his secondary project and modification. Now that he had read that book on robotics and the relationships they shared with other machines and tools, the rest was absolute child's play. He pulled from his belt the Polar Spur that the hermit gunsmith had kindly entrusted him with and began to take it apart methodically, piece by piece. He laid the strewn parts out upon the table, except for the Polar energy cylinders that he trashed straight away. This weapon was not going to be a Polar anything, it was going to be unique and completely new. Not just an accessory, but an actual extension of himself.

Deftly, the dark-haired robot picked up a sharp knife from his toolbox and calmly gutted the flesh that was his lower right arm, from the wrist directly to the joint of his elbow. He opened up a fold of his skin that revealed tendons made of steel wire and the thin colourful cables that were like his veins, powering him with electricity. He could install an extendable port in the wrist that would be connected to his electrical system and positronic brain, and then, and then…

With a definite blueprint in his mind, Quote eagerly got to work.

xxx

The path that led to the balcony was a confusing maze of acid-tipped spikes and pools of toxic waste, the dangerous bloody solutions that came forth after the Doctor had sown the seeds of red deep into the ground. It was an aqueous red weed, of which the local wildlife had thirstily partaken of and had been warped into a shape similar to that of the frenzied mimigas, their skins lightening to a violent crimson and their demeanors shifting from laid-back to positively rabid. It was a long hard road, one that would definitely test the very mettle of a man.

Luckily, Curly Brace was no man. She evaded the spike traps and pools of red poison with dexterous ease, avoiding all dangers with an athletic ability equal to and surpassing any acrobat. Her mind was focussed on a single mission objective; Find Quote, repair him, kill the doctor, destroy the crown, and escape to somewhere else. Somewhere safer. Everything else around that simple directive had dwindled down into mere details, she would process them when she had the spare time to do so. For now, she had to keep her vision clear. Curly shoved away a bewildered-looking critter as she used the impressive length of her gun as a pole vault, lifting her towards a higher and safer platform. The only thing that mattered now was that she stayed alive long enough to make sure that everything was okay.

She was amazed to find that she had made her way to the presses while remaining relatively unharmed. Small bite marks had been scored across her skin by the bats that inhabited the cavern, nibbling and sucking for the blood that she did not have. They were easy enough to ignore. The side of one of her pant legs had been burnt away however, due to an uncalculated slip towards the red poison. Curly had been immensely lucky that it was only her clothes that had been singed. Right now, her map system told her there was a long series of presses lining the roof of a relatively harmless corridor, presses that Curly didn't think she could outrun, even if she was moving at top speed.

It seemed like she was trapped here, but she didn't want the kindness of Momorin Sakamoto and Itoh to go to waste. The robotic girl backtracked a bit, searching for debris on the ground. Holding her machine gun with only one hand, she scooped up a couple of small rocks and walked back towards the presses, intent on trying out a plan.

Concentrating hard, Curly rolled a moderately sized stone roughly about the size of her hand towards the floor below the press, waiting to see what would happen. The press came down hard and fast and bore upon the stone like it was a delicious morsel of food, causing Curly to flinch from its sudden and unexpected speed. She only wasted a second though and heaved up her machine gun, letting the rest of her stones fall to the floor. She struck the fallen press again and again with rapid fire until the dangerous contraption disintegrated, leaving only a pile of pebbles and dust.

She double-checked her map system again just in case she missed anything, before moving forward and standing where the fallen press had been. Her shoulders were tense, expecting to be struck from above. Nothing happened. Smiling, albeit a little bit nervously, Curly Brace picked up a rather sizable chunk of the broken press and continued the process all over again, slowly moving forwards step by unsure step. It took a very long time for her to reach the end of the corridor, too long it seemed, but at least she was whole and unhurt as she turned the doorknob at the end of the cavern and stepped out into empty space. The very pinnacle of the island, a place with no ceiling above her head. The balcony.

It had been ten years since Curly had last seen the unhindered sky.

Wandering away from the door that she had left carelessly ajar, she twirled around a bit, trying to see the world from every angle that she could. The wind was tugging pleasantly at her hair, and it felt wonderful. Fresh air and sunlight was so much better than the dank dreariness of the caves. The balcony was made of marble blocks with rills of slate, many centuries of isolation causing a thin layer of verdant grass to grow in-between the cracks and partially blanket the area in green. With no ceiling it must have rained here often, hence the healthy growth. Above the doorway into the caverns was a statue of a winged angel, staring blankly out into the horizon.

Quote was around here, somewhere. There was nowhere else for him to be, unless he had fallen off the island. Curly felt her breathing apparatus clench at that idea, disliking where it went. That could not be possible. He was probably nearby, lying in a broken heap. A frenzied mimiga who got in a lucky shot before he could act might have rendered him inactive. Curly knew it was a sad day in her life when she had to count _that_ as part of the optimistic side of things. She walked further on, looking for any telltale signs of red. His red hat, his red pants, his darkly crimson gloves. It'd stand out easily against the faded greys and greens.

She started to call out his name in the hopes that he would be able to answer her and she could follow the sound of his voice. It sounded loud and alone upon the top of the island, a pioneer hearing the echoes of her own voice. Curly came upon an abandoned helicopter and entered it, searching it from top to bottom. It had come from the surface only a short time ago, she knew this because the forsaken food in the ration packs had not spoilt yet. There was still personal belongings and research equipment in the holding area, but still not sign of Quote, or any indicator that he had been here before.

Discouraged, she abandoned it as well. There was a large edifice in front of her, something of a Greek temple that had been the pride of an ancient civilization a millennia ago, but something in her CPU told her that it would be a bad idea to go inside. A very bad idea indeed. Her map system did not extend that far. She would be relying on her eyes alone. Curly looked up at the tall temple with a sinking feeling in the back of her mind. Just looking at the place seemed to exhaust her. No, that was wrong. She was a robot, her body never got tired. If anything it was her mind that was feeling the strain.

_Please Quote… you're not hiding from me, are you? Why? What did I ever do to you?_

Curly stepped in something shallow, wet and red. She drew back and raised her foot a little but, some slick droplets of the liquid dripping to the stone patch of the floor. A puddle of blood. If it had been spilled on one of the grassier areas of the balcony she wouldn't have seen it at all, because it would have sunken into the earth by then. It was nearly black by now and still retained some of its reddish tints, but most of it had already coagulated, except for the part that she had stepped in. Curly crouched down a little and looked around, seeing more smears of dried blood around the area and slightly darker patches of grass. A battle had been fought here, and somebody had definitely lost. At least it had not been Quote. When he was wounded he didn't bleed.

There were footprints and skid marks, highlighted by the blood. Curly followed them like a tracker hound, trying to picture how the fight had played out judging from the marks on the floor. Quote had been walking towards the temple with just a little bit of caution in his step, something had ambushed him from the side and there had been a brief scuffle. Quote had drawn a knife, or some other sharp-bladed weapon. If he had used one of his guns there wouldn't have been so much blood. Curly found the body of a mutilated and mutated mimiga further along, lying supine on the grass.

Curly inspected its wounds. The cuts along its body were defensive and non-fatal, but at some point Quote must have realised that the mimiga wasn't going to back down until he was destroyed. The death blow had been a horrible stab through its heart, breaking several of its ribs in the process. Oblivion would have come to it in mere seconds, feeling only a brief amount of pain. He had given it a humane death. She smiled sadly. That kind of behavior was just like him. Quote had always been a gentle soul, before and after the battles that had rendered him an amnesiac. Killing would never come easily, even if he had been programmed to embrace it.

At least she knew that he had gotten this far. She could call out to him some more, but Curly felt confident enough to bet the farm that Quote had entered the temple up ahead. If frenzied mimigas were the toughest foes outside in the balcony, then he had already proven that he was tough enough to survive out here. There were more dangers yet to be seen. This made her feel a little anxious on the inside as she rose again and stepped over the body of the dead creature carefully. Quote, though quiet and reserved, was far stronger than she ever knew she could be. He probably thought differently about it, but she knew it to be true. Whatever had hurt Quote would surely eat her alive for breakfast, and nobody would be around to hear her screams.

She passed by an empty house. She didn't even check to see if he was in there. She was fixed on that temple ahead of her, utterly convinced on what it contained. Curly was, and always would be a combat robot. Battle was no stranger to her. If the island was to fall and all lives on Earth were to be plunged into the Doctor's darkness, she wanted to die knowing that she had done her very best. Before her processor died out for good, she could be proud of that one tiny fact. It'd be a pride that not even the Doctor would be able to take away from her. Quote and Curly Brace had been brought into the world together, she could only hope that they would be able to leave it in kind. For a lifetime of loyal service, didn't they deserve that one little blessing?

This next mimiga was by far a giant when compared to the one that had come before. It had either been augmented by the Doctor's twisted experiments, or had eaten a whole _field_ of red flowers as opposed to just one. It was slumped against a rise in the balcony's terrain, sitting down with its large head bowed. Its jaw was open and slack. Its skull was split open, because buried to the hilt in its forehead was Quote's sword, pinning it against the wall. If Curly had been human she would have hurled. Instead, she frowned and walked up to it, biting her lip a little. Wrapping her hands around the hilt of the sword she pulled it free, hearing it withdraw from the body with a sickening meaty slurp. No longer being held up like a gruesome display, the mimiga tumbled forward and fell on its face, bleeding into the ground.

Curly wiped the bloody sword on the grass briefly to clear away the sticky gunk, then slung the professionally crafted blade upon her belt, the pommel of the weapon catching gently against it and her hip. It might come in useful sometime if her machine gun turned out to be of no effect. It always paid to have a second weapon handy. Quote's unintentional charity could prove to save her life.

Swiftly and gracefully, Curly used the body of the dead mimiga as a stepping stone to the higher platform above. She touched down effortlessly and began to run, the entrance of the temple right in front of her eyes. The giant mimiga had been the guard. No wonder Quote had had to pin it down so ruthlessly. It had a job to do.

Shrugging off her machine gun and holding it in her hands, the female robot stepped inside the temple, where she was about to meet with her destiny.

xxx

Red Rose Vertigo.

It was just as lovely as he had imagined it to be.

Quote rubbed his hand subconsciously across his brow and put down the steaming soldering iron, his work complete on both the tool and his own body. If he had thought that working by himself was difficult, working with only one available hand was the worst. He had the vague thought that he could summon a servant and force them to act as his assistant, but he hated the idea of bringing another soul into his secret laboratory, and even more, to poke around within his own insides. No thank you. He could manage.

Besides, it had all worked out beautifully. Quote stepped away from his workbench and held up his new weapon, turning it this way and that to observe the way it glinted evilly in the low light. He had made a mould of the replaceable pieces of the Polar Spur and had cast them in a strong metal that he had tempered a crimson red, while altering the pieces that he could not replace, namely the innards and the empty energy chambers. They would remain empty, because they were useless now. This gun didn't require ammunition at all. It was better than that.

He was a particularly vain person when it came to his work, so he had also taken the time to skillfully chisel an insignia on the side of its butt, a simple engraving of a rose in mid-bloom. Red flowers. It all came back to the red flowers. Quote turned his arm over, looking at the faint scar-line of a recent modification, then unlatched a small panel at the base of his wrist, revealing an empty installation port. The port was connected to his electrical system, so it was a physical outlet for his energy. He could power small pieces of machinery if he wanted to, provided the energy cost was not too high. At the same time he removed the metal cap at the bottom of the gun's butt, which contained a similar port. The two ports had been created for one another.

Unraveling the small plug that was hidden within his wrist, Quote pulled out about a foot of black insulated cable and plugged it into the bottom of the newly-created weapon, easing the gun carefully into his modified hand. It was important that the cable extended and retracted smoothly with his movements without it getting tangled or jammed up. The robot took a few steps away from the table and switched the gun from hand to hand a few times, observing the extension cord with a watchful eye. There were no problems with it.

Evil came from the red flowers. The crystal in his chest had come from the red flowers as well. Quote's power came from the crystal, and therefore, Red Rose Vertigo came from Quote. It was like a timeline, a parentage, no, a refinement of the evil within. He had refined the weapon and the power source too. The only way the Vertigo would misfire was if Quote himself was dead. That wasn't going to happen. And if he was dead, why would he want to fire it in the first place? It was the perfect weapon.

All that was left was for him to try it out. Quote took the safety off and depressed the trigger, feeling a slight tugging in his chest as the crystal within him lit up strongly, reacting to the call for power. The empty energy cylinders filled up with red light as his right arm began to grow hot, a conduit between the weapon and his crystal. Oh god, the power! He could feel it within every fiber of his being! He had expelled it so easily before with his hands when he had been a human man, but now it was tight and focussed, strong. It was like comparing a light bulb to a concentrated laser.

It was only now he realized that he didn't have a target. Shrugging within his mind, Quote simply pointed the gun at the wall and released the trigger, wanting to see what would happen. There was only a tiny amount of spare time left to him, but all his time in the laboratory would have been wasted if his new gun didn't work. He wasn't about to walk into battle unless his weapon was tried and tested, first.

Everything went red. The dim room lit up as a burst of crimson laser scorched through the wall and ate into the hard bedrock like it was made of butter, a thick rod of power about three feet wide and twenty feet long boring into it with an efficiency unmatched by any pneumatic drill. Quote was shoved away roughly by the fierce backfire, but stood his ground firmly enough for it not to be an inconvenience. His eyes were wide with rapture as he actually saw the sides of the decimated wall _melting_ from the heat of the Vertigo, rock that had been tough and solid since the formation of the Earth.

Dark magenta smoke was rising from the barrel of the Vertigo as Quote lowered the gun, feeling his chest throb painlessly and his right arm a numb heat in his side. This weapon was sweet nectar from the gods themselves, but he estimated that each fully-charged burst would require a cool-down period of about one minute before it would be fit to fire again. That was alright. He could limit himself to light spitting bursts with just the quick press and release of the trigger whenever he was in combat. Anything that he could strike with _that_ laser would certainly not be living long enough to bother him after the damage was done.

"It's time." Quote whispered mysteriously, blowing away the dark red smoke from the end of his gun. The robot inside of him was still sleeping peacefully, like a baby, but that was not going to last for long. When he awoke he would stare right into the beautiful blue eyes of his friend, at the same time Quote would have his hands around her neck. He flicked dark hair away from his brow, taking a sick kind of pleasure in being so cool. He had waited _so_ many years for it, they wouldn't call him a nerdy geek now. When he smiled, it was shark-like. "Time to dance the last dance."

His form shifted to vapor, then dispersed in the partially decimated room.

xxx

The temple was set on the very edge of the island, so that further beyond it lay nothing but air. He was here alright, there was nowhere else for him to be, and Curly had a gut feeling that she had come to the end of the road. This was all that was left. Stepping through the threshold she must have entered some kind of undetectable field, because her map system immediately malfunctioned, not that it had anything left to show her anyway.

So this was the place where the lords of the demon crown were honored. It was so quiet, like walking through a mausoleum. Curly was almost afraid to raise her voice above a whisper, yet she did so regardless. Unearthly breezes kept on filtering through the temple, making it feel like there were many worshippers here, but they were invisible and unheard. "Quote?" She called out hesitantly, looking around for any sign of him. "Are you in here? Say something if you can hear me, because I've come to help you."

The demon crown was placed in the seat of the throne, unbroken and free to whoever would walk by and take. The wicked red eye in the middle of the crown seemed to be watching her, gauging her every move. Curly knew that all she had to do was creep to the throne, lift the crown up and smash it into a million pieces, then her original mission would have been completed. But it probably was not as easy as it seemed. If that was all it took to wipe out the source of evil on the island, Quote would have come back to her with a triumphant smile on his face a long time ago. No, this felt far too much like a trap.

She started forwards anyway, caution in every step. Trap or no, nothing would happen if she stayed where she was. Curly approached the foot of the throne, lowering her machine gun just a little. She was so close now, she could reach her hand out and-

"A subject should always kneel at the throne of their new blessed king."

Somebody walked out from behind the back of the throne, somebody familiar, that she knew well. Quote held a hand to the side of the throne as he stepped out from its cover, leering at her in a way in which Quote had never done so before. His shirt was torn but roughly stitched back together, and he was leaning forwards a little as he moved, carrying the slight stumbling gait of a drunk. He had a sinister, tired and nearly dead look in his eyes, a corruption that did not belong there at all. He approached Curly but then stopped a short distance away from her, checking to see what she would do next.

Curly should have seen all of this and made a quick judgement about it on the spot, but her design and thought processes had been modeled on humans, so she was subject to all the flaws that they had, emotion-wise. "Quote!" She exclaimed, breaking out into a huge smile. "I was so worried about you! I thought you had been broken, but it looks like you haven't even been damaged. Thank goodness for that! Are you alright?" She reached out to touch Quote's shoulder, but the male robot unexpectedly drew away, denying himself of her touch.

He smiled wearily, looking at the demon crown that had been placed aside. "I didn't expect that taking the crown off for only a couple of minutes would make my mind feel so… dizzy and swimmy. The both of us are reeling. But that matters not, for we are still alive. Curly is your name, isn't it? Curly Brace. I can see why he locked your memory up nice and tight, like a secret diary. It's a shame he didn't hold out for longer."

She backed away from him. The first traces of uncertainty were beginning to show up on her face, and it was now that she noticed the self-assured, darkly humorous look that was written all over his face. It didn't suit him at all. She was happy that Quote was here and whole, but she was worried for the strange things that he had said. His body looked perfectly fine, but had there been any damages within? "Hold on a minute, did you just say that you were _wearing_ the demon crown? We came here to destroy it! Has something come over you?" She paused, thinking of her priorities. "The Doctor." She added. "Did you manage to kill him?"

When Curly took a step backwards Quote obligingly took a step forwards, keeping the distance between them level. The discomfort he had felt when he had taken off the demon crown was only a temporary thing, and already he could feel the inhuman strength and magic returning to his body. The crown was still acting as an umbilicus, securing him to power both unimaginable and vast. He stood up straight, attaining his full height. "Oh, I killed the Doctor alright," he soothed, low and musical, "his body is dead upstairs if you wish to check for yourself. But there was something strange about him, something, I'm afraid, that has managed to grow on me. Can you feel it?"

If he was referring to the palpable feeling of dread all around her, then yes, Curly felt it too. Her eyes dropped down to the sewn-up gash across Quote's dark shirt, and the vague suggestion that something beneath it was slightly out of shape. Quote didn't know how to sew, but somebody had fixed it up for him. It must have been the same person who had changed him as well, into somebody who she felt a tiny twinge of fear for. "What exactly has grown on you, Quote?" She asked in a grave tone, playing along to his little game. He didn't feel right, and she wanted to know why, from his own lips.

Quote looked pleased that she was willing to dance to his tune. He advanced on her again, in the process of pressing the female robot up against one of the many stone pillars that were supporting the temple. He knew all the memories that the robot had still been familiar with, he had looked over them several times in his spare moments, both the ones he had made himself and the ones that Curly had eagerly told him about. He was going to play with the cybernetic heartstrings of the girl in front of him, because he assumed that if the little robot felt so strongly about her, she would naturally feel the same way. What a mockery of human emotion. Whoever had built them should have been ashamed.

He leant forward slightly to address her. "The idea that I don't have to be the puppet of a government that has probably long since passed away. It has been ten years, and they have forgotten about me, about _us_. What is the point of fulfilling a mission that nobody cares about anymore? I am free to do whatever I want now, and maybe the demon crown is a tool I want to use in order to reach those means. I don't need a human master to tell me how to live my life." Quote looked at Curly appraisingly, trying to predict her reaction. At the same time he took both of her hands with his own, both the free one and the one holding onto the machine gun. "Don't you agree, Curly? Don't we have that right to freedom now?"

She tore her hands away from his violently. "Not at the expense of innocent lives!" She snapped, angry with him for what he was saying. It was like Quote was a completely different person now, somebody that she hated. He was telling her dirty rotten lies. "Have you completely forgotten about the mimigas and the other people on this island, or are you just not functioning correctly? Whether we destroy the demon crown or not doesn't matter, it pales in the light of that we need to protect the people here at any cost! We were created with the ability to adapt to any change in the environment and our orders change as well, through the passage of time and events. Whether you like it or not, Quote, humans haven't been ordering you around for the past ten years. You've been ordering yourself. You already _are_ free, and so am I!"

The female robot was smarter than she looked. He leant forward, bending at the hip in order to violate her personal space. "You call this freedom?" He purred, slamming one hand hard against the surface of the pillar, above her head. Curly flinched. "Hiding in a dank dreary cave for ten years without the light of day, fighting to survive day in and day out for every moment of our lives, thinking of everybody else except for yourself? Do you call that freedom? Huh? Do you, Curly?"

His hand that was hanging by his side snaked up craftily, resting against the side of her hip. Her sword was hanging loosely there, ready for use. If he really wanted to hurt her, all he had to do was pull it free and swing upwards, decapitating her in one stroke. The animosity she could feel from him was as strong as a rushing river, and she wondered what on the face on the planet could have happened to him in order to make him hate her so. In her innocence she had completely missed a secondary emotion that was coming from Quote, an emotion that was impossible for a mere robot to feel. Lust. It was the sentiments of the Doctor, and the Doctor was the only one who understood them.

"I don't call it freedom, not at all." Quote continued, trailing his hand up the gentle curve of her hip and soft stomach. He had only been planning to kill her, but maybe he could have some other kinds of fun as well. Playing with the little robot in his head was one thing, but that had its limitations. _This_ would be far more interesting. "I call it being made a fool of. The people of this island would fix their various stigmas to us and use us as a sacrificial lamb. Do you think they would have _cared_ if either of us had been killed at the hands of the Doctor? In their eyes, we are not even alive."

"Stop it." Curly said angrily, but softly as well. "You're spreading lies. They _do_ care about us, enough to entrust us, to entrust _you_ with all their faith and hopes for the future. It is all they have left, and all they could give, but they gave it to _you_. Doesn't that mean anything to you anymore? And I swear, Quote…" Her eyes narrowed menacingly. "If you don't move your hand from there I'm going to rip it off."

An empty threat. She wouldn't do that to her very best friend. Still, she was armed and he needed to take precautions. As quickly as he could, his hand moved from her stomach and grasped her right wrist, the one that contained the ludicrously large machine gun, bending it backwards hard enough to completely shatter the bone had she been a human girl. Reflexively the fingers loosened their grip, causing the gun to clatter to the ground. It made a dull, heavy sound as it struck the stone. She cried out, too surprised by what he had done to stop him from drawing the sword from her belt and then casting it to the side.

He was still gripping her wrist as he forced her gun arm high above her head, pressing it down against the stone where it could not escape. But she was not completely helpless just yet. Curly struck him hard with her left hand, swatting him across the face. His head tilted away from hers by the strength of the blow, and Quote held himself there for just a moment, processing what she had done to him. She hadn't left a mark on his face, but still he glared at her with accusing eyes. "That was a mistake." He said in a grave tone. "A deadly mistake. A horrible, regretful mistake."

She could slap him all day if she wanted to, but in her current predicament she wouldn't have been able to even scratch him. Curly was superhumanly strong, but Quote, modeled after a man, was far stronger. It wasn't the slap that really infuriated him, but the principle behind it. She wasn't going to bend to his whims and that angered him. She was a robot, she was meant to obey! Did that mean he had to break her, just as he had broken his host? A doctor's work was never done…

His hand slipped up under her high-cut red top and Curly could not stop him. She tried to pull away from him but Quote was still pinning her against the pillar so that she could not escape. He was smirking lecherously, looking like he was searching for lost treasure. His thumb and forefinger pressed against the frame of her brassiere and slid it away, discovering one shapely breast. "Oh my…" He breathed, looking into the robotic girl's face. He squeezed gently, trying to make a judgement. "Whoever made you must have been a genius. This hardly feels like plastic or rubber at all. It almost feels so real…"

Her eyes widened and the answer came to her swiftly. This could not be Quote. It was a doppelganger or some other kind of fabrication, because she had known Quote all his artificial life and he had _never_ acted in this manner before. He was acting like a disgustingly perverted human! She could feel her colour rising, the anger in the midst of her neural matrix beginning to gather. How dare he touch her in this way! No one was supposed to touch her there, not ever! This knowledge was as basic to her as the programming it took to breathe and walk. She would make him _pay_.

"_Get off!_" She cried and whipped her head forward, bashing her forehead against his. Curly had been prepared for it and had braced her systems hard against the impact that rattled the machinery around in her head violently, but Quote had not been privy to that information. She managed to surprise him, the male robot thrown back by the impact and grunting, letting go of both parts of her body. She smiled briefly, nastily. Looks like her hard-headedness had come in useful after all.

She darted to the side and grabbed the first thing that came in contact with her hands, Quote's old sword. The other robot had only been distracted for a second and came at her again, both his hands outstretched with his fingers hooked like claws. He looked positively furious. The only thing she could do now was swing, forget about the past and attack her former ally. She could hate herself for it later but for now she had to survive. The sword cut through the air, making a sound like a scream.

Clothing was hewn but not the flesh. The rough stitching that Quote had made upon his dark shirt fell open again, revealing the red crystal that was pulsing and acting as his evil heart. It was glowing a bright red and radiating heat, reacting to the robot's radiant anger. It was just as furious as he was. Curly held her sword out in front of her with both her hands wrapped around the leather grip, trying to make sense of this latest revelation.

Quote ran his hand down his chest to make sure that he had not been wounded. There was a faint little seam that ran diagonally across his modified chest on both sides of the gem, caused by the tip of Curly's blade. He was not hurt, but she had still managed to scratch him. The flaxen-haired girl gritted her teeth and stood her ground. "Who are you!" She cried. "What have you done with Quote!"

The dark-haired robot thought that she had been kept in the dark long enough. It was time for her to know the truth and weep for her loss. "Your little friend has lost his body, Curly Brace. He is as immaterial as a wish or a prayer. He has willingly become my devoted servant, and as a boon, he granted his own body to me, for my personal usage. He has whispered everything in my ear, everything that he once knew and everything that you ever told him. He is up here," he tapped the side of his head, mindful of not disturbing his audio sensor, "performing his role as my prisoner, my slave, my toy."

He was lying. Quote would have _never_ given in willingly to him. If he had been defeated, she knew he would have gone down after putting up one hell of a fight. Humming quietly, her CPU managed to put two-and-two together. "Quote killed you, didn't he?" She intoned, stepping away, trying to carefully creep towards the sky staircase that was to her left. "And you were so weak that the only way for you to win was to take away his body and bury his mind. You might think that all this seems strange to me but it doesn't. You've hacked his mind. I can understand _that_ easily enough. Doctor, I won't let you get away with this."

"By all means, try and stop me." Quote smiled, pulling a foreign-looking weapon from his belt. It looked like the Polar Spur, but it was decidedly different. It was dark red and longer, a handgun by name only. "Every time you hurt me you will hurt your friend as well, and when the time comes that you send me to Hell I will drag him kicking and screaming along with me!"

He beckoned to her, coaxing carefully. "Come here, Curly Brace. Let me break your neck."


	4. The Unspoken Law, I'll Be There For You

_I'll be there for you._

She hadn't been prepared for what the power of the demon crown had done to him. Quote had been formidable enough as a robot, but as the gravity lightened about his body and he rose two or three feet into the air, Curly knew that this was to be the hardest battle that she was to ever experience, both physically and emotionally. He had started to fly on purpose, because now he was agile and high enough to be out of the range of Curly's sword. In the midst of his levitation he snapped something open on his wrist and plugged a cable into the back of his gun, then he looked at the girl and smiled, pointing the weapon straight at her.

Reflexively she dropped to her knees and darted out of the way as a red jet of light leapt from his gun and flew straight at her, mightily scorching the spot where she had lain. The crater that was left behind was as clean as a surgical cut and only slightly charred. It was as if the stone itself had been erased from the face of the earth. Curly goggled at its chilling efficiency and rose, trying to keep her mind focussed on Quote. She hefted her sword and rushed at him, swinging it hard and fast. He wouldn't be able to fire his fancy weapon if he had no arms to do it with.

Her wrist tilted at the very height of the crescendo and she wound up smashing the flat of her blade against Quote's arm, heavily denting it but not damaging the machinery within. It had been an unconscious jerking reaction, some part of her simply unable to deal him damage. They had fought once before but that had been under a simple misunderstanding. She didn't want to start hurting him now, but what else could she do? Die? She was not going to let herself die.

Quote shot his arm out and grabbed hold of the blade, trying to rip it out of Curly's grasp. She wasn't about to let go so easily though and found herself rising into the air along with him, the hilt of her sword the only thing keeping her from falling to the ground. She wanted to shake it free because it was the only weapon that she had left, but Quote was unexpectedly the first one to let go, allowing the girl to drop away from him. His hand was lined with gouging scratches from where he had held onto the sharp end of the blade, almost deep enough to slit through the leather gloves that he was wearing.

Curly hit the ground on her back and then struggled to get to her feet as fast as she possibly could, reaching out for her blade that had clattered to the side. It was a good weapon, but it was too close range, she needed something else that would be able to keep a safe distance between the two of them. As she stood a burning lance of fire grazed across her right arm, melting and eating away at the synthetic flesh, revealing one or two inches of metallic cables and circuitry. There was no way that Quote was shooting to miss, with that extremely powerful gun at his fingertips he certainly meant business.

Beside the pillar that Quote had tried to pin her to was Curly's machine gun, the large heavy tool her only other viable weapon. The enemy was coming towards her now, re-aligning his mental crosshairs. Next time his shot would be more accurate and burn her in a vital area, like her internal processing unit. Quote looked like he was becoming more adept at moving about during flight, too. With the smoke rising from her arm and a smell of burning plastic in her nostrils, Curly ran for her machine gun like the hounds of Hell themselves were after her, trying to ignore the thought that Quote was only a second away from shooting her in the back.

That shot didn't come. Curly dropped to the floor, rolled, and grabbed her huge weapon in the midst of her roll, finishing up the acrobatic movement with the barrel of her gun pointed directly at her airborne enemy. He was watching her carefully, but his gun was still raised and trained on her body. He looked unconcerned, but still quite mad. On one knee, she squeezed off a shot herself, hoping that the weapon still worked and that it had not been damaged. There was a click of the trigger, a pause, but then a stream of blue light erupted from the weapon, firing a volley of bristling energy directly at Quote.

There wasn't enough time for her to see what had become of her attack. She was out in the open and vulnerable to his weapon, so Curly whirled around and used the tall stone pillar that had been at her back as protection, as a shield that would deflect Quote's attacks for a short amount of time. She was squatting against it, her back pressed against the stone with her gun clasped firmly in-between her hands. If she had been holding onto it any firmer she would have dented her fingernails into its side.

As for Quote, he saw the shots fired at him and threw an arm up to shield his face, struck by the blue fire as pain ripped screaming through his system. He tilted a little like he would fall from the air, but then his form wavered and shimmered, thinning to a faintly red mist. His body reassembled itself a few feet to the left, only inches from the ground, but he was confused and stunned by the shot, so he disappeared again and reappeared far off to his right, as if the continuing teleportations would heal him of his wounds.

His injuries weren't permanent. All Curly had managed to do was stun him. Quote pulled his arm away from his face and reestablished his bearings, looking around for his enemy that had temporarily disappeared. "Curly?" He called loudly, losing his patience. "Come out. I know you're around here." She couldn't have gotten far, and she wouldn't run away. Her responsibilities were too great for her to flee. The afternoon light glinted on a small sliver of golden hair against one of the stone pillars, she was trying to hide from him.

There she was. He raised his gun and shot a blast at the pillar, high enough so that it wouldn't hit her even if he was lucky. This was a warning shot, made to flush his scared little foe out of her hiding place. The red blast ate a hole out of the solid stone and made it look like Swiss cheese, raising a cloud of marble dust that floated towards the ground. It was such a clean cut, a firearm's answer to a scalpel.

In combat one could never allow their enemies even a moment to stop and think. They would never have the chance to formulate a plan. To become the victor, one had to keep them in a permanent state of fear and confusion. Fear and confusion? Quote felt that he could manage that rather well. He smiled and took a step forward in the air, disappearing again in the midst of his motion.

Curly cried out a bit as the red shot flew over her head, anticipating that the red blast was made to take her life. He had missed, however, and she pulled herself to her feet, staying as flat against the pillar as she possibly could. Looking up, she saw that Quote's weapon had bitten straight through the rock and out the other side, so this defense wasn't nearly as strong as she thought it had been. Heck, it was useless! She couldn't stay on the defensive for long anyway, sooner or later she'd have to attack Quote and bring him down. If only she could think of a way to do it…

Suddenly he was floating right in front of her face. He had teleported! Eyes wide, every process in Curly's mind went still, startled by his sudden appearance. A backup thought process kicked in however and her hand flew to her side, about to draw her sword on him. He was close enough to be struck by it. Her body backed away as well but bumped up against the pillar, unable to go any further. Grinning like a monster, Quote pleasantly ripped the port from the thick metal butt of his gun and drew his arm backwards, preparing to strike.

"I see you." He whispered.

He smashed the butt of his weapon against the side of Curly's face, utilizing a good portion of his strength to bring her down. Her head whipped to the side violently and made a hollow thunking sound, her body twisting along with the rest of it in order to keep up. The attack had been so sudden that she didn't even have enough time to moan. Curly fell to the ground like she was a deactivated toy, her processor traumatized and her system crashing. With one single blow she had been knocked completely unconscious.

Quote floated to the ground and slung the Vertigo back into his belt, haphazardly checking the bottom of the gun for any smears of blood. He had to keep telling himself that she was a robot, and so was he. Sometimes his old mind and habits slipped up a little. Coolly he nudged her prone body with the toe of one shoe, then used it to carefully roll her over onto her back. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't moving anymore. Good.

He knelt and brushed aside her beautiful flaxen hair that had become askew across her face, delicately pushing it behind one of her green audio sensors. Then he touched her cheek. It was warm but it was cooling down now, because her body had deactivated and it didn't have to function as hard as it once did. Quote watched her solemnly for a minute, quietly, perhaps giving her a moment of silence. She looked so beautiful, even if she was an artificial creation. Such a pity.

"Looks like it is the end of the road for you, Curly Brace." He muttered thoughtfully, moving his hand lower to lightly caress her neck. "I'm sorry it had to end this way. Goodnight."

xxx

She felt her body falling to the ground but then found herself strangely disassociated with it, like it was a utility she didn't need anymore. Vaguely she was aware of her own head bouncing roughly on the marble floor, her blonde hair crowning around it, but then that was all, the image disappearing from her mind like a movie film that had come to its end. She was blind and utterly numb.

No, that was a lie. She could see herself standing up, picking herself up from a fall that had possibly knocked her out stone cold. It was imagination, not touch, but an inexpressible sensation of being in two places at once. No matter what the truth was, she could not see or picture her surroundings. Her eyes were closed, she did not see because she was unable to, but because she did not _want_ to. Quote had turned against her, her friend, her brother, and her counterpart. Why would she want to open her yes and look into a world like that? Curly loved him, hated him, wanted him to die and yet wanted him to live forever. She cracked a sardonic smile. Quote must have damaged her processor with that pistol-whip, because she certainly wasn't thinking straight anymore.

Suddenly she realised that she wasn't blinded because her eyes were closed, but because somebody was holding their hands over her eyes, playing the most inopportune game of 'Guess Who' in the world. The hands were cool and gentle, smelling of well-worn leather. They were wearing leather gloves. Curly's shoulders went tense, knowing who it was that was standing only a few centimeters behind her. She couldn't see him, but she could feel and sense that Quote was there, in this deep and dark level of her unconsciousness. A place where she was alone and defenseless.

She opened her mouth to yell at him and order him to move away, lest he attack her from behind. Was it not enough that he was trying to break her body, did he really have to damage her mind as well? "Shh..." Quote hissed softly, killing any words that she was about to say. There was no evil in his voice, just a great sense of kindness and vague strain. "Don't open your eyes. Don't touch me any more than you have to, and whatever you do, don't turn around. You won't see anything, and I will disappear. Just stay still. Stay perfectly still."

It wasn't the evil Quote. It was the good one, the one she remembered from her past. Curly wanted to smile but then found that she couldn't. It was nice to hear Quote's true voice again, but he sounded too scared and in pain to be very jubilant about. "You're still alive." She said levelly, lowering her hands that she had half-raised to brush Quote's hands away. Curly didn't want him to disappear, not again. "Quote, what's going on?"

"Our audio sensors," he began mysteriously, "they pick up all different kinds of radio signals. I am using a narrowband frequency modulation to talk to you, so I'm not really here. But you really need to _believe_ that I am, or I won't be. The Doctor is too busy trying to kill you than to notice what I'm doing. If you look at me he'll see you through my eyes and I'll disappear. This is the last chance that I have." She could picture the worried, solemn expression he was wearing. He was risking everything he had left just to be able to talk to her.

That gesture, even in the worst of situations, touched her greatly. She didn't really understand everything that he was saying, but the message was clear. They didn't have much time. The Doctor would notice him eventually or Curly would die. It felt like she was in another world now, but it was very likely that she was dying, even as she thought Quote's words through. "What are we gonna do?" She asked lamely, because even though they had managed to get this far, the situation still looked hopeless.

"I'm in hell, Curly." Quote admitted thickly, close to the verge of tears had he been a human. Somebody had been hurting him, a _lot_. "Every moment is agony. I can't go on anymore, you have to be the hero now and complete our mission. I couldn't do it by myself. I've been watching you fighting him and each time you come close to wounding him you draw away. You can't do that anymore. You have to kill him once and for all. It's the only way."

Only Quote could be so selfless and selfish at exactly the same time. It sickened her. Didn't he remember the Third Law, that a robot had to preserve their own existence no matter what the cost? No, she supposed not. With his broken memories, Quote thought and reasoned just like a human being. Curly found that she envied him for that, and hated the way he didn't consider her feelings when it came to his life. "I don't want to kill you." She confessed weakly, not able to justify the reason properly in words. "Please don't make me kill you…"

He had strongly suggested to her that he was not there at all and was only her imagination, coupled with a pirate radio broadcast, but Curly could not shake the feeling that Quote was gently breathing down her neck. His breathing was labored, like he was hiding some sort of great pain. "If you want to free me, break the red crystal that is in his chest. His essence is in there, and if you can let it out I might start functioning again. But that's not everything you have to do. At the top of the temple is the island's core, you must destroy that as well. Then the mimigas will be free." Quote removed his hands from her face, dropping them like the effort it had taken was nothing short of massive. "Please Curly, you _have_ to kill Date."

"Date?" Even though he had let go of her she still kept her eyes closed. Killing the Doctor and breaking Quote's body was a daunting task, but it seemed easier if there was a chance that Quote might survive. She was fighting for everybody, but she wanted to fight for him most of all. Nobody had suffered as much as he had and been forced to live with it. That was as bad as death. It could be _worse_ than death.

She imagined him smiling bashfully. "Well, Date is the Doctor's first name. When he took me over he immediately learnt everything about me, and I immediately learnt everything about him. The information overload was so great that all I could do was scream for hours. It was terrible, like I imagine being force-fed acid would feel. Date is a very evil man."

That was the understatement of the century! Curly wondered how much time had passed on the outside, after she had fallen unconscious. It seemed like only a few minutes, but that would have been plenty of time for the Doctor to get down to the business of murdering her. What was going on? She didn't really want to know, but felt like she _had_ to know, whether it was terrible news or not. "Quote?" She murmured. "If you're still in the Doctor's head, can you see what is going on outside?"

"Yes. I can't see the you that is talking _per se_, but I can see the you that is lying comatose on the ground. It's strange to see you unconscious when you're speaking so easily to me." There was a pause, the other robot figuring out what to say. He was afraid that the information would hurt Curly, hurt her in a way that was only a vague suggestion to him, but his encounters with the Doctor had made him a far less innocent individual. "The Doctor tried to rape you, but he's forgotten that his body isn't as human as before. Now he has his hands around your neck. He's strangling you."

So she was running out of time. Curly knew she could only function for so long without a proper air supply. Asphyxiation would be the worst death in the world for her, after she had already drowned once in her life. Quote wouldn't be around to save her this time, indeed, Quote _himself_ was the one doing the murdering. "I have to go back." She said resolutely, not quite sure on how she could do it. Her system usually rebooted itself after some kind of major trauma, but never before had she found herself in a place like this. "I'll break the crystal, destroy the core, then smash that ugly demon crown to bits."

"I have faith in you." Quote said softly, then placed both his hands onto her shoulders. Curly definitely felt it, he wasn't just her overactive imagination taking hold. This would probably be the last time he'd ever do this. "I'm not going to let him kill you. I am going to try something. I don't know if it'll work, but I'd rather do _something_ rather than nothing. You can turn around and look at me now. Go ahead. I invite it."

She turned around, opening her eyes. Nobody was there, just blackness, empty space. The hollows of her mind. There was nobody else in this world but her and it collapsed, waking her up. Her reboot program kicked in, then she was nothing but processed data.

xxx

He was on the floor along with her, leaning over her, straddling her hips with his hands clamped firmly down on her neck. Both his thumbs were pressing her synthetic windpipe closed, so not a microbe of air could drift in or out. She was unconscious, sleeping like an untouchable angel, and it filled Quote with a maddening rage that he could not have her, not in the way that he saw fit. It was like being Tantalus, dying of thirst and hunger while both food and water were just an arm's reach away. If he couldn't have this girl then the only thing left was to kill her, to make her pay for everything that she was and everything that he was. Quote's arms were shaking hard as he squeezed, not because they were tired, but because of the totally different kind of pleasure he was deriving from the act, the power that came from cold-blooded murder.

It was as if he had gone completely mad. His face had contorted into a mask that would have been completely alien to the original Quote, a hideous amalgam of murderous rage and euphoric delight. Curly had a hidden air supply that would kick in after her windpipe had closed, but she could only carry enough air to last a brief few minutes before her body went into emergency hibernation, and then a terminal crash. She had given her air tank to him a long time ago, and the moment she had done that she had signed her death warrant. All Quote had to do was press down hard and wait.

All of a sudden her eyes flashed open, they were clear blue and staring blindly at the ceiling. He felt her body jerk slightly beneath him, a slight twinge that was her internal defibrillator immediately bringing all of her limbs and systems back to life through a brief shock of electricity. It was useless for her to wake up now, she was already dead. Still, she tilted her head up slightly and looked into Quote's eyes, the artificial eyes of one staring into the artificial eyes of another. Curly seemed to look straight through him, ignoring the person who was taking her life. It was like she was looking for somebody else, present yet invisible. He got the greatest surprise of them all. In the midst of her murder, she smiled.

Her arms that had been lying carelessly by her sides shot up, reaching for Quote's own neck. Curly's fingers wrapped around his jugular cables but focussed mainly on the back of his neck, rather than his vulnerable windpipe. The male robot choked as his supply of air was drastically cut short by a strength he didn't know the girl had possessed, but he was still devoted to his work and didn't fight her, continuing to hold her down. He had a lot more air than she did, and despite wherever she got her second wind from, she would definitely be the first one to pass away.

The two robots were lying on the temple's marble floor, busily strangling one another. Quote had strength and madness on his side. Curly had her desperation, her faith and her hope. Her vision was beginning to dim, her five senses fading away as her body started to lock down into temporary hibernation. The robotic girl's pretty lips curled back into a snarl, working as hard as she could on Quote's steel vertebrae. If ever she needed a miracle, she needed it now. In the back of her mind she prayed for it while she searched in Quote's eyes for the lesser other, the person that she trusted.

Quote knew what she was doing. She wasn't simply trying to cut off his air supply and strangle him to death, as he was doing to her. Curly was squeezing down hard on his vertebrae, attempting to break his neck and his spinal column. If she did that he would be paralyzed, never be able to move again. She would immediately win. Luckily it would never happen. The foundation of Quote's chassis was solid steel, something not even a singular robot could warp or bend. He smiled piteously at her, knowing that the last few moments of her life would be spent in futility. Stupid bitch.

_Date…_

_Date… You won't hurt Curly anymore…_

A familiar voice. Quote paused, his grip on Curly's throat loosening just a little, but not enough to allow her to breathe. The little robot was talking to him calmly, even though he was watching the murder of his counterpart through his own eyes. He blinked once, confused for just a moment. The robot was ordering him around like _he_ was the master and Quote was the slave with absolutely no hesitation, none at all. He sounded completely sure of himself, unafraid. Was he stupid, or merely seeking some extra punishment? Soon enough Quote would give it to him, hard and strong until he wished that he was dead.

_You can't threaten me. I'm no longer afraid of pain. You won't hurt Curly._

The access codes to his positronic brain were secretive, never to be spoken aloud. In a robot's entire life only two would know of the codes, the robot itself and the robot's creator. With the correct access code a person could crack open the robot's neural matrix and look at everything inside as if they were words in a book. In Quote's case three people knew and had known his access code, his password. Jin Sakamoto, the Doctor that had taken over his mind, and little Quote himself. It was one of the few things that he could recall from a lifetime erased. In Quote's head the robot located his inner access panel and entered the code against the Doctor's wishes, going deeper inside.

_I won't let you._

At this point in his mind their powers were equal, neither one dominating the other. The robot found his system configuration and defaulted its values, setting every option to maximum output.

Static filled his head like the thunder of a thunderstorm. It was wild, unimaginable, blocking out every individual thought and impulse with its calamity. Both souls in his body screamed, feeling the incomprehensible pain. His entire _being_ was becoming distorted. Quote ripped his hands away from Curly's neck and grabbed at his head, throwing his body backwards and letting out an inhuman wail. He was screaming for the both of them. The crystal in his chest was a bright vibrant red, reacting to the pain with just as much vehemence.

Curly acted fast. As sweet nourishing air flowed back into her system she wriggled out from under Quote's heavy body, bracing one foot against his front and then roughly shoving him away. She was gasping hard but still in the action, one hand clutching at her starved throat while the other fumbled blindly for her machine gun, lying close by. She felt pity for the other machine as he lay on the ground and convulsed in the midst of his seizure, knowing that Quote was suffering just as much as the Doctor was, but he had made this sacrifice for a reason. He was buying her some time.

She had a couple of minutes at the most. Eventually the Doctor would come to enough coherence to reset his configuration, then he would probably change the access code without telling Quote about it. As soon as that was done he'd be upon her again and nobody would be able to help. Curly quickly grabbed her machine gun and strapped it to her back, roughly brushing back her tangled hair and running towards the sky staircase on the other side of the temple. The building was relatively small, but on that particular afternoon it felt like it was a million miles long. Quote's screams were the background music to her exodus.

It was like Cthulhu's Crevasse all over again. She attacked the staircase with all her power and went from block to levitating block, pulling her heavy body up against gravity as fast as she was able. Her processor was spinning from her sudden reactivation and the sharp blow that had knocked her unconscious in the first place, but she had to think and move hard, fast and strong. The joints in her arms groaned against the strain but the floor was steadily dropping away from her, she risked a brief glance over her shoulder and saw Quote curled up on the floor, the shakes of his epileptic fit already beginning to calm down.

The second level was not what she had been hoping for. It was smaller than the first and strangled with red flower vines, the cursed blooms growing as freely and as carelessly as wildflowers. Cages and cages of mimigas were lined up all over the temple, some set down on the floor while others hung precariously from chains welded onto the ceiling. These ones were not frenzied and vicious, they were little, weak and scared, half-starved by the Doctor's tyranny so that they could either eat the red flowers of their own free will, or die. These were the ones that had chosen to die.

There, in the middle of the floor, cold and stinking was the body of the Doctor, face down in a puddle of his own blood. It was the shell that had contained all of the Doctor's evil, but like a moth leaving a discarded chrysalis he had flown onwards to greener pastures. Flies had already taken over his body and fed upon it, and somewhere deeper inside him maggots had already begun to grow. The stench was sickening. Curly could stomach it because she was a robot, but she felt a strong sense of sympathy for the mimigas caged and forced to witness this festering rotting corpse decompose.

Time was too precious for her to waste. She felt bad for leaving these innocent creatures locked up in their cages to continue their torture, but she reasoned that they would not be able to escape anyway if she was killed and Quote became the new king of the Earth. She had to think of the bigger picture, as much as she hated to do so.

Curly believed this, and yet found herself changing her mind as she laid eyes upon a familiar face, one that she thought was dead to her. The robotic girl leapt from the staircase and ran towards the cages, jumping over the dead body of the Doctor without a second thought. The cage was at the other side of the platform, but she couldn't just walk on by like she didn't have a heart. Curly wanted to cry and she sunk to her knees, placing both her hands on either sides of the small cage. "Koron…" She whispered, hardly daring to believe.

The mimiga child was slumped in the corner of the cage, her little head drooping and pressed against the wall. She was malnourished and incredibly weak, but as she heard Curly's voice one ear perked up slightly and she opened her eyes. She sat up like she had been immersed in an unnatural, draining sleep. "Momma?" Koron said feebly. "Is that you?"

The cage wasn't even locked. Curly pulled back the small bolt that would have been impossible for a mimiga to reach while on the inside, but quite accessible on the outside, a cruel taunt. The cage door swung open with a creaking rusty squeak and Koron stumbled out of it tiredly, trying to crawl into Curly's arms. She had believed that all the children from the Sand Zone had been killed ages ago when the Doctor and Misery had banished her to the Labyrinth, her hope had dwindled to nothing over the days, but she had been wrong. Koron was still alive, but barely. Curly wanted to hug the little mimiga that believed her to be her mother, but held her carefully an arm's length away. "No baby, not now." She crooned gently. "The Doctor's chasing me. You can't stay with me yet. Where are the others?"

Koron stared at her with sad eyes. She would have cried if she could have, but she had already used up those tears ages ago. The Doctor scared her more than death itself, but she hoped that Curly would protect her. She was her mother, it was what mothers did. "Momma…" She squeaked, raising her little hands to her face even though she knew it was impossible for her to cry. "He took them away. They gave in and he killed the ones that didn't. I didn't want to give in either, but he said he'd let us starve to death in here or eat red flowers and be his soldiers. I'm the only one left."

No punishment was as bad as that. Curly felt her old hatred for the Doctor erupt anew, like a healing wound that had burst open again against its stitches. Along with Quote, her adopted children had meant the world to her. When her shadow of a life was blanketed with doubt regarding the empty purpose of her existence, she had managed to find meaning again by raising those children herself when nobody else could. It had given her a sense of value that had filled the empty spaces of her being. It was the closest thing to love that she ever could achieve.

Now she had to be brave and do what needed to be done. Curly let go of the little mimiga girl's small shoulders. She wobbled a little, but managed to stand by herself. Good girl. Even though she was weak, she had to be strong. "I have to run." Curly declared softly, standing up again. "If he finds you with me he'll kill you too. Are you strong enough to open up all the other cages and get everybody out of there? Only open up a few if you're too tired, then the others will help you." She smiled, trying to let Koron know that everything would be okay. "Can you do that?"

The mimiga girl blinked, then looked at her hands. She was tired and sore from not moving around much for such a long amount of time, but she had the power to free everyone now, the ability lay within her grasp. Also, she wanted Curly to be proud of her. "I think so…" She breathed, wondering how she would get to the cages suspended from the ceiling. There was bound to be a way. "I can do it. Run away Momma, before he puts you in a cage too!"

That was unlikely. Quote would break her into a hundred pieces if he caught up with her again. Curly patted the mimiga lovingly on the head then turned and ran back towards the staircase again, purposefully stepping on the Doctor's dead body just to spite him. She wanted Koron to be safe. If everything else in the world was fated to turn to evil and dust underneath the hands of the Doctor, she wished for Quote and her adopted daughter to be freed from that, because they were the only family that she had left.

Black Space. From the title she had expected something a little more ominous, but it was just a large storage room tucked away at the very top of the temple. Curly climbed into it numbly, her mind still trailing several paces behind her, back where Koron and the others were. She prayed that Quote wouldn't find them, she hoped to death that he'd be too deeply into his madness to pay attention to anybody else but her. The robotic girl stood upon this new level ground and moved away from the staircase, surveying the local terrain.

The core was here, arranged carefully at the back of the room with its smaller doppelgangers placed all around it. It seemed to be either hollow or dead, deeply into its own hibernation. Back in the geothermal base she and Quote had wounded it quite severely. If Misery hadn't shown up to spirit the entire creature away in time the island would have already fallen long ago. Everybody would have died. On that day it felt like the bad guys had acted for the greater good of the island, even if it was in their own interests.

Nevertheless, the core had to be destroyed today, here and now. As Curly Brace thought of Misery she found the witch woman lying dead upon the ground, her vacated corpse segmented into two separate pieces. Her once lovely face was pale and waxy now, entombment would eventually turn it towards the texture of papyrus. The wound upon her body was, of course, the handiwork of Quote's Polar Spur. She could have computed that from yards away.

Another pile of refuse on the ground was the body of a little girl mimiga, violently ripped apart. Curly felt her mechanical heart leap into her throat when she immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was the body of one of her dead children, but when she got a closer look she saw that it could not be so. She did not recognise that frail, yet brave little face, scarred from a battle that Curly would never know of. It was discarded in a patch of dark blood, dried into the shape of a red flower. Had that been intentional? No, she guessed not, but things had a habit of happening in coincidences. Poor little soul, but Curly needed to press on.

She had to climb over one of the smaller core pods in order to have access to the huge main one. It towered above her, dark and empty, like an exhumed coffin. Whatever lived in there was mortally wounded and cowering inside its shell, waiting to die. It was a living being, but Curly _had_ to kill it. She felt sympathy for it and wished that things didn't have to work out this way, but countless lives were weighing against the core's one simple existence. If it was already dying, she would put it out of its misery. The robot stood a good distance away from it and raised her machine gun, ready to fire. She would pummel it with blue energy until it caved in once and for all.

"Hold it."

Curly froze. Quote stood as he climbed the final stair into the black space. His right arm was held by his side and contained the Vertigo, cocked and trained at her back. He should have guessed that this was her ultimate destination, just as it had been the other robot's destination, and he had indeed paid for it dearly. His head was still ringing painfully with the echoes of static and discord, he wouldn't fall for that trick again. He watched Curly turn around slowly to face him, taking care not to make any sudden movements lest he shoot her. Her eyes were sad and regretful, but below that was a sense of anger. He knew she wanted him to die.

Her eyes widened as she got a better look at Quote, who was striding away from the end of the sky staircase, stepping over the body of Sue. He had lost his cap and his shirt was in tatters, his synthetic body below it flecked with streaks of red. The crystal was giving him power, but it also looked like it was poisoning him, bit by bit, just as aspirin dissolves in water. Red sparks of electricity were coming off his body in leaps and bounds, in brief bursts of light or as miniature arcs of lightning. His shoulders and arms were partially blackened from the power. Small smears of it were wiped across his face, like war paint. Finally his eyes were nothing but narrow slits in his face, where deep fury and hate were stoking the furnaces within him. In her unconsciousness Quote had told her that he had been sent to Hell, now it was beginning to show up on his body, and Curly found herself believing him.

This wasn't Quote, and it probably wasn't the Doctor either. Together they had birthed a third entity. It was the crown.

He had become a demon.

"You thought you would do what I could not and destroy the core? I can't let you do that, Curly Brace, I need this floating continent as my base of operations. The first time I attacked the core this happened to me," with a sweep of his arm he indicated the crystal in his chest, "do you really want it to happen to you too? You are lucky. I like this body, and becoming a woman, albeit a robotic woman really does not appeal to me. You've come to the end of all things, Curly. Drop your weapon and I might just let you leave alive."

That lie was so blatant that she almost cracked a smile from it. Quote was walking towards her as he talked, moving around the mini core rather than just climbing over it. He didn't want to take the barrel of his gun off Curly for even a nanosecond, because that would be enough time for her to shoot him. She noticed that he had his finger already depressing the trigger, and that red energy was gathering in his chest, his weapon and his arm, all three objects beginning to glow a dull red. It was as if he was on fire from the inside. Curly could feel her sense of hope dropping like a stone. He _was_ right. This was the end.

"I'm never going to submit to you, Date!" Curly cried, her voice heavy with furious passion. She raised her machine gun at him defiantly, cornered yet willing to do battle. "I've got too much to fight for! Too many people need to _live_! I won't let you step all over them!"

He quirked an eyebrow at her, intrigued that she had called him by his old first name. He had never spoken it out loud before, at least on this stinking old island. The heat in his gun arm was reaching its maximum potential, hot and burning and simply intoxicating. Every time he felt the power he became more and more elevated to the stature of a god. He tilted his head back a little and laughed at her, stopping in his tracks. They were both within firing range of one another. "Actually I'm glad that you haven't submitted!" He raved madly. "What better way to test out this new power than with an unwilling sacrifice! You will become charred soot upon the ground, Curly Brace!"

Upon hearing those words a great coldness seemed to come down upon Curly's body, the cold hard ice-blanket of truth. He was probably right. She had a dinky little machine gun and he had a weapon that could melt the very heart of ancient stone. It would cut through her like she wasn't even there at all, ripping a second exit in the temple floor. She was utterly cornered, the body of the core at her back.

The body of the core. At her… back…

She heard a voice in her head. She didn't know if it was her own voice, or Quote's voice, or anybody else's. Frankly she didn't care, as long as it spoke the truth.

_Fly, Curly. Fly up high. Fly just like **he** did._

She had nothing left to lose. Her processor calculated subconsciously that there was a sixty percent chance that she would be killed from this, but that was information she didn't want to hear. Curly closed her eyes tight and screamed out her challenge, feeling her tears falling within her, if not without. "Then shoot me, Quote! Just get it all over with! I'm _sick_ of waiting for this to be over! _Do it_!"

He graciously obliged her. Quote braced his feet hard against the ground and prepared for the fiery recoil, releasing the trigger of his Red Rose Vertigo. He felt the heat energy rushing from his chest and through his arm in a river of dizzying electrical power, a sensation that both taxed him and heightened his senses to an indescribable level. He cried out himself as the energy left his body and lit up the gun in his hands, illuminating the empty energy chambers, then speared from the barrel to his adversary, a wall of maddening crimson.

She only had a sliver of time to act. Curly's reflexes went into overdrive and she tilted the barrel of her machine gun towards the ground at her feet, letting loose with a volley of rapid fire. Her gun spewed out blue flames and she was suddenly airborne, lifted towards the ceiling by the momentum of her weapon. Her mind reeled with the acceleration and she held onto her gun tightly, rocketing increasingly upwards. She had missed being burnt by the laser of the Vertigo by only half a foot, maybe even less. She flew.

Curly had a bird's eye view of the scene below her, framed by thin strands of her own golden hair. She watched the laser slam into the front of the core and ripped it apart like tissue paper, boring a hole through it like a tiny bead of jewelry. The core burst into flames and collapsed into itself, emitting one last painful death cry. Suddenly the room was filled with an odd smell, like burning meat and the scent of low tide on the beach. Whatever the core had _really_ been, it was dead. Quote had destroyed it himself.

"Ooh you _BITCH_!" He roared and lunged for her, leaping into the air himself and glowing with the angry energy of the crystal. She wasn't safe up there, not anymore. Curly let go of her gun and pushed away from it with her legs, trying to use it as a source for opposite momentum. She fell on her shoulder and rolled instinctively, only seconds away from Quote putting his fist in the patch of floor where her head had been. The cobbles cracked and shattered under his hands, spreading outwards like a spider's web.

Standing, Curly found herself close to the exit, her hands on her knees and breathing hard, trying to process everything that was going on. The world was moving too fast for her. She had scratched her chin when she had landed and her hand went to it briefly, looking up at Quote with her beautiful, disobedient eyes. The male robot pulled his fist out of the floor and stood, looking away from her, at neither his enemy nor the flaming core at either side of him. He was looking at his hand, then he shook it, clearing away a fistful of debris. "You stupid robot. You have ruined _everything_." He deadpanned, vacant of the rage that had poured out of him only moments ago. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

She smirked at him. "T.S. Elliot. I've heard of that saying too. You've blown up your own core, Date. The island's going to fall and everything here will be gone. You've turned this beautiful island into a wasteland. Just give up now while you still can. Or…" Curly hesitated, but then drew the sword that was still hanging on her hip. "I'll kill you."

A deep rumble came from the floor beneath them. It had only been seconds since the core had been destroyed, but the breakdown had already begun. Quote was framed by the wall of fire behind him, the smoldering remains of the island's heart. He was still looking at his hand, then he glanced at her with a spark of sadistic humor in his eyes. "_You _will kill _me_? Ha. You make me laugh, Curly Brace. You cannot kill a human being. It is part of your three sacred laws. Your little friend whispered those secrets to me long ago. I know all about your weaknesses. If you even _try_ to kill a human, you will die yourself. Such is the power of the three laws."

Curly recoiled as if she'd been slapped. How did he know? Quote couldn't have told him that, he just _couldn't_ have. But then again, he might have. "It's not true!" She replied through gritted teeth, holding her sword firmly out in front of her. "I'll kill you!"

"It's a shame, really." Quote replied demurely. "Everything about your friend I've taken for myself, his name, his body, every little iota of information. I know a lot about you, Curly Brace. I know that you've failed as a soldier, as a government agent, even as a _mother_. You're nothing but one big failure, and you'll have deaths on your conscience forever, just. Because. Of. That."

Curly screamed. Quote wasn't afraid at all. He was protected from her, the same technology that had created her was going to ultimately destroy her. He realised that it wasn't a scream of pain, but a war cry. She charged him, holding the sword like a trained warrior. He wasn't in danger, she'd shut down before the sword even touched his body, but Quote still didn't want to take any chances. The male robot raised his gun and pulled the trigger, wanting to blast her into a thousand different fragments.

She moved in a blur and evaded the small, useless little shot. Tears were streaming down her face, tears that she wasn't even aware that she could shed. She had never cried before, not once in her artificial life, even though she had wanted to on a thousand different occasions. Quote had won and she knew it, because of the three laws. Because she could not kill a human being. The girl could feel her processor rapidly overheating, knowing what it was going to do. It would burn out on command and kill her instantly. The dilemma was unbearable.

It was impossible, and yet Curly didn't want to die on her knees before her enemy. She wanted to die with a weapon in her hands. Her sword arm came up, ready to strike…

And then…

It all became apparent to her.


	5. The Unbroken Law, The Law Of The Heart

_The laws of the heart cannot be broken._

Itoh's hands worked frantically on the dashboard of the helicopter, trying to get it heated up and into the air as fast as he could. The ground beneath him was humming madly as the core of the island was beginning to fall apart, the very land itself threatening to implode. The island was pretty much hollow, so there was not a lot of time. He kept imagining a chasm opening up beneath him and the helicopter, a great gaping mouth that was willing to swallow him whole. The mimiga gulped hard, trying to push away his fears and focus on the matter at hand. The propellers of the helicopter were beginning to spin, quite sluggishly at first, but if he attempted a liftoff without the engine properly warmed up he would risk it stalling on him.

He and Momorin had followed the path that the two robots had used before them. It had been incredibly hard-going, and there had been several heart-stopping moments in which Itoh was certain that he would just _die_ from fear. All he could do was buckle down and follow the woman in front of him, who always seemed to know what to do. The flaxen-haired robot had passed through the caverns quite recently herself, so most of the local monsters and creatures had been taken care of already, leaving only the sheer footing, spikes and toxic waste as the danger zone.

Frankly, he was glad to be back in territory that he was familiar with, territory that he knew. It seemed like only yesterday that he and the Doctor, the Sakamoto family and Professor Booster had landed on this strange island in the sky and had started their work. The helicopter was going to be a little more difficult to fly than before, because his hands were of a particularly different shape, but Itoh thought that he should be able to manage it well. He had been such a _failure _ever since the Doctor had taken the demon crown, he hoped he could redeem himself by offering Momorin a chance to escape. She _deserved_ to live. He didn't want to die, either. There was still so many things left unfinished, unsaid.

"It's running!" He shouted over the tremors of the island and ran from the cockpit to the empty holding area, where each side of the helicopter was open to allow any escapees inside. Itoh heard the first thuds of large blocks of masonry hitting the ground, and looking up a bit he could see the clouds and the sky rising upwards, drifting away from their heads. The core must have been destroyed. The island was beginning to fall. It would not have time to break apart in midair, it was going to literally smash upon the ground!

Itoh raised his hands to his mouth and yelled as loudly as he could, over the clamorous din. "Momorin!" He cried, knowing the woman was close by but just not seeing her anymore. She had wandered off to look for Sue, and the other two robots if she could, but she had promised Itoh that she would stay close to the helicopter and far _far_ away from the throne room. She wouldn't break her word. Not now. "Momorin! Momo! Where are you! We have to go, right now!" The mimiga cringed as the only reply he got was from above, a huge block of marble tumbling down and nearly striking the helicopter, cracking in two.

He heard voices coming from ahead. Not a singular one as he had had hoped, the voice of his friend, but many, arguing and scared as they continued to move forwards. Itoh grasped the frame of the helicopter and leant forward, trying to see where all the voices were coming from. Scurrying and crying, a large crowd of mimigas of varying shapes and sizes were running towards Itoh's helicopter, dodging rocks as they came. Judging from their direction, they must have escaped from the area of the throne room. Had the Doctor really been defeated?

One little mimiga, a mere child from the looks of it, could not run as fast as the others and was beginning to slow down, weeping and squeaking and panting in fear. An adult paused, turned around and ran for the child, intent on scooping the infant up and carrying it to safety. It was useless. As soon as the idea had worked its way into the adult's head, its moment of utter stillness was long enough for a chunk of heavy debris to fall from the sky like a hailstone, striking the adult hard in the head and fracturing its skull, killing it instantly. The little child froze, its eyes wide, its hands balled up against its chest. It screamed, loud and terrified, and then fell to its knees.

Itoh had been watching this so intently, with such horror and fascination that he barely noticed a mimiga with goggles rushing up to him, guiding the pack. When he spoke it was bold and direct, leading only because no-one else could. "We're coming aboard!" He ordered, not asking permission, just stating the obvious. His people would die if he didn't. "Move aside!"

The engineer did as he was told, even though the helicopter technically belonged to him. The mimigas began to file inside, taking up a good half of the loading area. They clustered together instinctively, like frightened rabbits. That child was still out there though, now huddling under a fallen stone pillar. It would protect it a little, but not for long. Itoh turned to the mimiga wearing goggles, waiting impatiently to be the very last one to board. "Have you seen a human woman around here, anywhere? Green hair, a lab coat, in her late thirties? I have to find her, because this helicopter isn't going anywhere unless she is on it!" He had added the last part on purpose, as an incentive for the other mimiga to actually _think_ hard and not blow him off just because they were in a dire situation.

The mimiga accepted Itoh's hand in helping him hop aboard and made a light humming noise, thinking for a second. "Back where we came, as we were getting out of that building I thought I heard somebody faintly shouting. If somebody really _is_ still out there, they definitely would have been crushed by now, no question about it. Your friend is probably dead. Sorry."

But that couldn't have been the case. Momorin was not the sort of woman who would die so suddenly, so stupidly. She was smarter than that! Itoh's brow furrowed as he looked out at the balcony around him and the dropping stones that came from above. They were not falling so rapidly now, so…

_God help me. I'm going to die._

Before he knew it, the timid engineer was out of the safety zone and sprinting across the grass and debris-laden ground, an ice-cold feeling in his gut and a long frightened shriek in his throat. He could die at any moment, just as that other mimiga had died. A rock would hit his skull, smash it straight open like an eggshell and then splatter his brains all over the floor just like the yolk. He was committing suicide! He was letting the island kill him! He was-

A large shadow swept over him and he caught a glimpse of it in his peripheral vision, his body interpreting it and acting way before Itoh's mind had even figured out what it was. He skidded and hopped backwards with a small shout, a large chunk of stone hitting the ground only a foot or two away from his face. If Itoh hadn't noticed that quick, fleeting shadow that had been in existence for only a moment, he would have surely been dead, just a sad little smear on the ground.

Even though he knew he had dodged the rock by only a hair's breadth of intuition, it still felt like that rock had come crashing down upon him, pressuring his already rapidly beating heart. He just couldn't believe what he was doing, even as he picked himself up off the ground and darted around the fallen stone to wherever he believed his lost comrade was. Everything seemed to grey out, becoming an impulsive blur.

When Itoh had been a young human boy back at school, his thin wiry body had not won him much respect or a higher rung on the social ladder of life, but it had made him one of the fastest sprinters that the school had ever known. It was years later now, and Itoh's body was much older and of a different shape, but that forgotten speed had come back to him easily, giving him an even greater chance of survival. But it felt like he was no longer in control of his body, like it was moving about all on its own. Was this the way that great heroes felt and acted while they were performing their acts of bravery?

At some point he was on his knees, coaxing and reaching, his floppy ears raised slightly so that he could hear everything about him with greater clarity. Something moving entered his arms and he heard shouts coming from the direction of the helicopter, many of them all at once. What were they? Insults? Were they yelling at him the obvious, that he was going to die? Well, he had figured that out already, the very second that he had stepped away from the helicopter. They didn't have to state the obvious.

Tight little arms cinched around his middle, holding onto Itoh like he was a firm stone in the middle of a raging, uncertain ocean. Of course, the child! The engineer stood up and supported the little mimiga, a girl from the looks of it, with one arm and glanced back towards the helicopter and the people there who were shouting and calling out his name. Calling out his name? Nobody on the balcony knew his name, except for…

"Itoh! Please, for God's sake get out of that barrage!" She was a full head and shoulders above the rest. Momorin! The woman was standing beside the mimiga with goggles, her wise eyes now bright with fear. All the mimigas were shouting at him, but her voice was carrying over the others. She sounded afraid as well, afraid for him.

He immediately became aware of where he was, not by Momorin's face, he could have stared at that all day, but by a chunk of marble that fell at his side, breaking apart and sending a burst of shrapnel that grazed his arm and caused him pain. The child in his care had been saved from it, Itoh's body blocking the way. He yelped and started forwards again, heading towards the helicopter and the people within.

His whole body felt tingly and warm, sedated and at the same time electrified by the adrenaline flowing throughout his bloodstream. He was nearly crushed two more times on the way back, but some kind of god must have been watching over him, because he climbed the steps into the safe zone in a nearly hypnotized away and then fell to the floor, his legs giving way beneath him.

They gave him space to breathe. It looked like he had a lot of catching up to do. Momorin knelt beside him and helped to pry the mimiga child from his grip, the little one still shaking and scared. She expected her friend to be shaking in exactly the same manner, but he was remarkably still. "Are you alright, Itoh? What on Earth possessed you to go out there and rescue the child? You could have been killed!"

Itoh almost had a glassy look in his eyes. "I wasn't going to. I was searching for you, Momo." He answered distantly. "I thought the rocks were going to crush you to death. Tell me something, please. Did I really go out there while it was raining widow-makers? Really? Because I think somebody just told me that I did." He laughed nervously, trying to disbelieve.

"You did, and you saved somebody's life," she smiled, "even if it was not mine. You were very brave."

"I thought so." Itoh agreed, and then promptly passed out.

xxx

The blade of Curly's weapon was hovering only a centimeter away from Quote's throat. She was close to him, practically leaning on him for support, both her hands clasped around the hilt of the blade, held in a grip of steel. She wanted to wipe the tears from her face but her hands were far too busy at the moment, only a twitch away from cutting the cables that supplied electricity to the rest of his body. Trembling a little, she could feel the tip of the red crystal jutting from his chest, pressed slightly against her own breast. The crystal felt very warm, almost like it was on fire inside.

"You can't do it, can you?" Quote asked softly, condescendingly. He raised his gun and held it to her temple, Curly obligingly closed her eyes. She was trembling, and she didn't want to see the expression on his face when he killed her. She felt that it would be burned into her mind, from this life and into the next. Quote sighed and then touched her softly on the shoulder, sympathetically. This quieted down her shakes. "In the end, you can't fight the Three Laws."

Her head tilted up and she opened her eyes, looking at him intently, powerfully. She was smiling.

"You're wrong." She said.

The blade of her sword moved in a crescent of gleaming light. Her foot came up and she kicked him away, no longer focussing on his neck but on a different part of his body. Plastic cracked and circuitry was severed, Curly's body twisted and she finished her attack in a graceful crouch, on one knee with her sword pointed at the ground. Quote grunted with surprise and dropped the Vertigo, and also the hand that he had been carrying it with. The limb was severed at the wrist, as cleanly as if it had been done with a laser. Both objects clattered to the ground, the latter spurting out sparks of raw electricity.

Curly towered over him. The revelation pulsed in her body like a biological heart and it made her feel cool and still, like a tree, or an ancient stone. The robotic girl looked at him impassively as Quote cradled the ruined limb close to his body, bereft of his weapon and now receptive to her. He was still dangerous, but she wasn't afraid or anxious anymore. The truth was protecting her. He glared at her, eyes wide with hate. "You… cut…" He began, not quite believing it himself yet. He was used to delivering pain, not receiving it.

The vibrations were getting a lot worse. If they didn't evacuate soon they would be crushed under the weight of the temple. Curly spared a brief thought to Koron and the mimigas that she had been trapped with and hoped that they were already well on the way out of the danger zone. She couldn't do anything more for them now. "I just realised something about what you said, Date. You were right about one thing before, completely correct. You _have_ taken over Quote. You've taken his name, his body, his memory and probably even some of his personality, but there's one thing you _haven't_ taken, and you never will. His soul. All you can do is imprison it." She was starting to get angry again, so she paused for a second to calm herself down. "But the most important thing is that you've taken his _body_."

He was looking up at her murderously. He stood, then extended his left hand, the only one that he had left. A ball of red energy formed within it. It was weak compared to the power that the Vertigo had held, but at least it was _something_. It could still kill her, completely short out her electrical system. "Listen to yourself. You've broken." Quote reasoned deliriously. "You're talking nonsense. You will die, you useless hunk of scrap metal."

She caught his hand with her left one and raised the sword with her right, twisting his wrist back until there was no way he could damage her with the light. Curly heard his wrist joint splinter under her hand. He was weakening and she was getting stronger. She hoped that somewhere within him Quote was waging a war on his own, fighting on the inside while she worked on the outside. They had always worked best while working as a team, and they were gaining some ground now. The answer was apparent. Of course! It was so simple! Why hadn't she realised it before?

"Doctor." She whispered calmly to him, speaking her truth. "You're not a human being anymore. You're a robot. And I can kill robots _just fine_."

He understood. For a second he just stared at her, but then he pulled away and howled in anger and panic, turning his body and his precious heart away from her. Curly released him and grabbed her sword with both of her hands. The Laws were her life, the very basis of her existence. They rested in her mind like stone monoliths forged by the hands of the ancients, huge, reverent and powerful. To disobey them was death. But if a robot was intelligent enough to slip by them as they watched and calculated, then they would gain the powers to bend around their own programming with ease. If Curly was right, she would do it, if she was merely lying to herself she would drop dead at the foot of her former friend.

She had to take the chance. Everything rested on this one, meager little opportunity.

_Forgive me, Quote!_

Curly thrust with all her might, leaning to the right and then jabbing forward, stabbing Quote straight through the chest. The crystal was as hard as a rock, it was like punching through solid stone, but Curly had grown. She was stronger than plastic and rubber. Stronger than stone. Stronger than steel. The strength of her conviction offered her a power that she would never conjure up again, but for now it was enough. It was just enough for her to pull through. After all, she wasn't fighting to protect her life, she was fighting to protect and honor everyone who had been trodden under the Doctor's boots, everybody who had suffered. Curly was a kind robot, so she slew Quote with all the mercy she could muster.

She felt something crack underneath her hands. The girl feared that it had been the blade of her sword, the only weapon that she had left, but it came from below that, travelling up the metal edge as a tiny little tremor. The crystal. Quote's head was tilted back and staring at the ceiling in an expression of ecstasy mixed with horrified pain, his eyes wide and disbelieving. The pain hadn't come to him yet but he was expecting it, braced for all the agony in the world. Curly's head was resting against the crook of his neck and his shoulder, her hands deeply within the hollow of his wrecked ribcage. "Actually…" She whispered, speaking into his audio sensor. "You're not really a human being _or_ a robot. You never were. You're a monster."

He made a gurgling sound in his throat and his hands dropped to his sides, several inches of Curly's sword poking out of his back. The crystal hadn't managed to rip through him so thoroughly in the beginning, yet her sword had done the job nicely. Small chunks of plastic fell to the ground, followed by the unusual spark or burst of electricity. Quote twitched once, weakly trying to purge the foreign object, then halfheartedly gave up.

Something warm and wet oozed down Curly's hands. She heard the noise of thick breaking glass, then suddenly Quote's legs gave out beneath him and he fell forward and down, heavily leaning against her for unconscious support. The robotic girl recoiled and drew the sword out of his body, meeting an ample amount of resistance. His body seemed to have molded around it firmly, holding it in place. The metal edge squealed and grated against the surface of the crystal as it was pulled out, generating sparks. The blade was dripping with a warm, red liquid, the same variety as the fluid on her hands. It looked a lot like blood.

_The crystal is hollow, like a capsule. That's why it broke so easily. Inside was the Doctor's… well, his life-force. Now it's turned to liquid. This is the stuff that was poisoning Quote._

As for Quote, it looked like he had a severe case of the hiccups in reverse, trapped in a series of small, convulsing little exhalations, like he was trying to empty every oxygen particle from his respiratory unit, breathing out but not breathing in. Curly had seen this involuntary reaction in organic creatures before. He was trying to stimulate a system that wasn't there. Quote was trying to throw up.

She dropped the sword and held Quote by his shoulders, utilizing her inhuman strength to hold him up. The crystal was heavily cracked and leaking, but it wasn't completely shattered just yet. A foggy outline was appearing around his body, wisps of a vapor that smelt like rotten red flowers and sulfur. It came off his skin in strands that looked like greedy, reaching claws. The red stripes of synthetic flesh were corroding before her very eyes and being released in the air. Curly stepped away and let go of him, holding a hand to her mouth. The vapor was like acid, even her air filter seemed to have trouble with it. When she breathed it in it felt like it was eating away at her insides.

Quote fell heavily to his knees, his head rolling forwards and drooping, much like the gigantic mimiga that had guarded the entrance to the temple, but the strange foul-looking outline still remained where he had stood. It was fuzzy and blurred, but Curly could see what it really was. The spirit of the Doctor. It had been balled up deeply inside of Quote and comfortably had injected him with numerous poisons, but now it had been set free. The crystal was only partially damaged so he was still anchored there by only a few weak little threads. She wished that she hadn't dropped her sword. It would be useless against something as immaterial as air, but at least she would have been armed.

_**Shame… shame… Curly Brace…**_

_**You've murdered your only friend…**_

_**How will you cope?**_

"Shut _up_!" She cried and kicked Quote hard in the chest, shattering what was left of the red crystal. The male robot's body reacted to this like clockwork and his body threw itself backward and he grabbed at his head, letting out a wounded, saddened cry. A torrent of fresh red liquid gushed from his body and Curly could hear _two_ voices within his singular scream, Quote and Date screaming in unison, a two-person choir of pain and agony. It hurt so badly that Curly could see that Quote was crying, but his tears were deep red, the Doctor escaping from every ready outlet.

They had been wound so closely together that the separation was something neither of them had ever been prepared for, it was like being born and being created all over again. For a moment both the doctor and the robot didn't want to leave one another, they clung together in bewildered fear, as the singular entity they had become was comfortable, familiar. It was almost a form of twisted, misdirected love. Would they be able to function as individuals ever again? Without so much as an answer, they were ripped apart and neither saw the other's face again.

A large chunk of the ceiling broke away and shattered itself upon the floor, letting through a bright, warming ray of light. Quote pitched forward and threw up the Doctor's blood in one great gasp, while the spirit above him was freed and sped upwards, letting out a harpy's screech, molding itself into the shape of a fleeing skeletal demon. Hopefully the Doctor would find his ultimate destination well and true. Hell. _That_ was the home he really deserved.

Curly knelt on the floor before Quote and the recently voided puddle of blood, leaning forward to hold him steady. That fluid must be wreaking havoc on his internal systems, she was honestly surprised herself that he hadn't shorted out from it by now, drowned in the blood of his enemy. She hadn't gotten any sign from him that he was conscious just yet, all he was doing was panting and coughing like a child just born, trying to shake off the chains of bondage that the Doctor had tied so firmly around him. They were loose now, but still so incredibly heavy. He had to remove them on his own.

As for herself, Curly's processor felt so hot that she feared the plastic around it would melt, silencing her forever. She had reasoned her way around the Three Laws using her own brand of stubborn, subjective logic, but she had cut it very close, way too close for comfort. The Doctor had given up his humanity long before he had seduced Quote with the demon crown and the power of the red crystal, it had happened the very moment he had stopped caring about everybody else.

But that was not true in a literal sense, only in a figurative or poetic sense. He may have been housed in the body of a machine, but that did not make his soul an artificial one. If Curly had been turned into a mimiga herself by the witch Misery, she still would have envisioned her unchangeable self as a robot. So what had she _really_ done? She had killed a human being.

No, Date was a monster. A _monster_. There was nothing wrong with eliminating that kind of hatred from the world. If she hadn't done it Quote would still be a prisoner inside his own body, the plaything of the next king of the Earth, and she would be dead. Even if this continuing dilemma inside her head drove her to madness or ultimately killed her, she knew that she had done the right thing. By God, she had.

She originally was only touching him to hold him up, so that he wouldn't fall over and onto his face. His equalizers appeared to be badly damaged, even if he managed to stand up onto his feet at all there would be no way for him to maintain his balance. He'd topple over like a chair with only two legs. Now Curly found that she had her arms around him, hugging him against her chest just as she had consoled her mimiga children whenever they were sad, hurt or afraid. Quote seemed to be displaying all three of these emotions at once, but still, her unconscious action had startled her badly.

It was a normal reaction to familiar stimuli, that was what Curly told herself as Quote tremulously tried to wrap his own arms around her waist, both his intact left hand and the useless sparking stump that had once been his right. It was oozing blood as well, but nowhere near as heavily as his chest. Curly could feel the damp wetness of the blood seeping into her clothing, but she ignored it. It was only blood, and it couldn't harm her at all. His damaged respirators gave a hitching quality to his already weakened voice. Despite this, Curly had never been happier to hear Quote speak.

"He's… gone…" The wounded robot rasped, tightening his hold on Curly just as little. He almost didn't believe it was happening. His mind was empty again, he didn't have to share it with anybody anymore. It had been defiled and contaminated to the point of disgust and minor self-hate, and yet it was _his_. Nobody else's. Quote made a small gasping noise that was actually an elated, disbelieving laugh. "He's really… _gone_…"

This was the _right_ Quote, the one from her memories and the one who was her friend. He was speaking and still alive. Curly squealed happily and yanked him forward all of a sudden, cradling his head against the hollow of her neck. The male robot cried out weakly at this sort of rough treatment but was unable to resist her, so badly broken that he was. "Quote! You're really _you_!" She announced, smiling with honest pleasure for the first time in what felt like an age. "I can't believe it! We _won_!"

He didn't answer her. It was not impossible to talk, but it was still very painful and difficult, and he would only be mumbling into her chest. The increasing vibrations of the collapsing island would drown out his tired voice, anyway. As if telepathically reminded of this through Quote, Curly looked up towards the ceiling and noticed the large series of holes in the roof, becoming wider and wider as more chunks of masonry fell from their secure places. It seemed that through some kind of miracle they hadn't been hit yet, but soon enough they would be. They had to evacuate.

Carefully Curly pushed Quote away and searched his belt, looking for an item that she prayed he still had. The Doctor might have thrown it away earlier, and if he had then all hope for them had been lost. Quote looked down upon himself, at the gaping hole in his chest and his ripped clothing, his severed hand and everything else that was soaked with clotting blood. He knew what she was looking for, he had always kept it looped carefully close to his empty gun holster in case it was ever needed again. It always helped to be safe rather than sorry. Slowly Quote fumbled around for it himself, unraveling it and showing it to his friend at nearly a retarded pace.

She accepted the tow rope gratefully. Many times Quote had used this blessed length of wire and nylon to save her life. He had never once given up and left her for dead. Now it was her turn to do the same for him. She had watched Quote perform the same procedure many times before. The first loop of wire went underneath his body to properly support his legs, then she crossed them upwards against his front and wrapped the two ends against one another at the back of his neck, creating a sturdy-looking harness. Quote allowed this to be done to him without any complaint.

There was enough spare cable of the tow rope left to complete the coupling. Curly laced each respective end around Quote's shoulder blades and towards his front again, then, kneeling, she turned away from him. "Okay now," she murmured, "climb on my back and hold on tight, we're gonna escape this temple before it collapses on us. You don't have to worry, I'm strong enough to carry you."

The robotic girl waited for him but nothing happened. He was still kneeling dazed on the ground, staring at the puddle of blood and plastic fragments that were splattered on the floor. He knew that they had come from his body, but it didn't make much sense to him. Only minutes earlier he had been lost and buried in the dark. Now he was surrounded by bright dazzling light and he had a _body_ again. He was trying to adjust to it as quickly as he could, but his reflexes had slowed to a pitiful crawl. The unwelcome flash of a memory came into his mind. "Sue…" Quote said meekly. "I killed Sue…"

Curly didn't know who Sue was, but by the sound of his voice she must have been somebody deeply important to him. He was beginning to grieve at the most inopportune time. "Not now, Quote." She scolded gently. "We can discuss this later. Hold onto me or I'll leave you behind."

That seemed to get through to him. She heard the male robot shift behind her and there was the unmistakable crunch and crackle of breaking plastic as he tried to move. Soon enough she felt his weight pressing against her back and her hands went backwards to search for the two ends of the tow rope, pulling them forwards and belting them against her stomach. Using the iron clasp she clamped the two ends of the cable together. Nothing short of a waterfall would be able to rip them apart.

His arms came up around her neck. Curly froze for a horrified second, all at once thinking that he was going to try and strangle her again, and this time from behind. But no, he was only trying to hold onto her more firmly, both his arms draped across her front like a shawl. It was a ludicrous thought, but she couldn't have helped thinking about it, if only for a moment. Curly stood and tested her body with its newfound weight, hoping that she was strong and stable enough to move. It appeared to be alright and Quote was not complaining. He never complained.

It was a lot easier to climb down from the sky staircase than it had been to climb up, even though she weighed twice as much now. For one thing, gravity always leant a helping hand and she was not being chased by an out-of-control demonic robot, so she had enough time to go slow and concentrate. Curly hoped that Quote had enough sense not to look down because it was a long way to the bottom. She measured out her journey by the leverages of her arms, counting each stair within her mind. Holding onto her tightly, Quote whispered; "Please don't drop me…"

She felt reassured, hearing that Quote's voice seemed to be getting a little stronger. "Don't worry, I won't. She promised.

The second floor was empty. All the cages were open and vacant, even the ones hung precariously from the ceiling. Red flower stalks had been ripped out of the cracks split within the floor and were tied firmly together to make several lengths of green rope, weak but resistant enough to hold the weight of a mimiga. They had used these stalks as ladders to reach the higher cages. Perhaps it had been Koron who had thought of the idea, but whoever it was they should be very proud of themselves. Curly hoped that they were very far away by now. As for the Doctor's abandoned corpse, it had been trampled under the feet of several dozen escapees. It served him right.

They couldn't stay and admire the truly ironical scene. The robotic girl got back onto the staircase again after a moment of amused silence and was climbing again, able to look down at the floor because it was closer and didn't make her feel dizzy. She could see the clouds rising from the open arches in the temple, floating upward in a speed that was way too fast to be natural. Actually, they weren't rising at all. The island was _falling_. With them on it.

How close were they to ground zero? Five minutes? Ten minutes? She didn't know. Curly skipped the last three stairs and just fell the rest of the way, relying on her balance and equalizers to offer her a safe landing. The stone floor cracked a little as she hit the ground, her knees threatening to buckle a little but behaving. For a moment she forgot about Quote and the sharp impact caused him to bump his chin against the back of her neck, eliciting a tiny "Ow!" from her passenger.

When Curly ran towards the exit of the temple with the end in her sights, she didn't quite feel Quote wriggle out of the loops of his harness until it was too late and he was slipping away from her. Not once did she believe that he had done this intentionally until she whirled around and saw him lying upon his side on the floor, looking up at her with knowing, almost apologetic eyes. He would go no further because he didn't want to. "I can't leave the temple," Quote said softly, working under a line of logic that Curly didn't understand, "only you can. You should run while you still have the chance."

"What are you talking about?" Curly demanded sternly, walking back towards him with an intent to re-harness him into the tow rope if it was necessary. She had already brought him this far, she wasn't about to give him up so easily. Yet as she got closer to him she noticed something, something that she should have seen much earlier but hadn't. It had completely missed her attention because she assumed that all was well. If it were possible, Curly would have paled visibly. Quote's chest was an empty hollow, scooped out of the machinery that had once been there. Vital machinery. "…Where is your regulator?" She asked softly, in gentle horror.

His regulator had been like a self-replenishing battery, constantly supplying a robot, _any_ robot with a seemingly endless supply of electricity. It usually had to be replaced every fifty years or so, of course, but it was the perfect way to keep a robot alive. Quote had survived for ten years in hibernation thanks to the constant work of such a remarkable engine. And yet, as he lay on the floor of the temple as broken as a mauled toy but still so unmistakably _alive_, Curly could see that Quote's regulator was no longer there. It gave her the same shock as if she had seen a human being walking around with a heart that didn't beat. A zombie. He was the equivalent of the robotic undead.

"The crystal destroyed it when it entered me." He explained taxingly, dully listening to the rumble of the falling stones outside. "I lost my main power source. If I go too far away from the only one I have left, I will die. But I am dead anyway. I died yesterday, the moment Date took me in and broke my regulator." He had to stop talking for a second to allow himself a breather in the figurative sense, watching Curly walking over to him and helping him to sit up. He was right. Not a fragment of his old power source remained.

Then what on earth could his _new_ power source be? Curly asked this of herself in a confused manner but was already vaguely aware of the answer, as gruesome as it was. She felt that she couldn't accept it, not after everything they had already been through. "The demon crown." She said gravely. "That's what you're talking about, isn't it Quote? You don't have to worry about that anymore. All the lords of the Crown are dead now, Date is gone, and it's powerless without a master."

"You don't understand…" Quote replied weakly, the effort taken to talk wearing him out. It was a huge struggle just to remain conscious and alert. "The line hasn't ended yet, there's still one left. It's me. Now that Date is gone… gone forever… it has been passed down to me."

"_What!_"

Quote trembled, he could feel the crown close by but it still felt too far away from him, far enough to make him feel frail. His body couldn't contain the power anymore now that he had been torn open, and without Date's help he didn't know how to control or even _understand_ it. It was like being powered through remote control, a signal hundreds and hundreds of miles away. "So you see…" He gasped, digging the fingers of his one remaining hand hard into the cobbled marble floor, "The crown has to be destroyed when the island falls, and when the crown is destroyed I will die with it. I'm going to stay here and make sure the job is done properly. Then my mission will finally be complete and I can rest."

Curly felt anger welling up inside her like a fresh wound. She was sitting beside Quote in a casual manner, like they had taken a seat for a few moments to have a quiet chat, but what she really wanted to do was to grab him by the neck and shake him violently until he started to make sense again. How could he think of his mission at a time like this? He was dying! She curled both of her hands tightly, trying to suppress the rage. "You promised me that you would function again once I broke the crystal. I did that, I did everything that you told me to. Why are you talking about death now when we worked so hard to _live_?"

He bowed his head a little, staring at his lap. Quote felt ashamed, he could feel the embarrassment and the guilt inside of him even if it was not perfectly evident without. "Yes, well…" He murmured into his chest, unable to look Curly in the eye. The male robot knew that she cared deeply for him, perhaps a little _too_ deeply for it to be appropriate, but he also cared for her as well, just as badly. She was the only real link into his past. She had known him when he had been complete. "The fact is, when Date tried to be gentle with you in the beginning, it was because of me. He interpreted some of my thoughts in the wrong way, in a human way. But, like him… I've gained some of his traits unconsciously."

She narrowed her eyes a little. Curly wanted to be sympathetic with him, but anger was still the dominant emotion residing within her neural matrix. "So the things that he said about freedom, about human masters and about our orders, they weren't originally his thoughts, he was unconsciously leeching them from you? Is that the way you _really_ think, Quote?" His head jerked up quickly and he looked at Curly with a hurt, remorseful expression, silently remarking to her that her words had hit him a very low blow. Curly sighed and shook her head. "Forget it, I know it isn't. I'm just trying not to lose it with you right now. What are you really talking about?"

The damaged robot shot an anxious glance towards the demon crown, still in its place upon the king's throne. He was technically supposed to be its master now, but he felt more like its servant. No. Slave was a far more fitting term. He wished that he could touch it again, if he did he was sure that he'd gain the courage and power to admit the truth. "You wouldn't fight him. You would never have hurt him if you knew you were going to kill me as well. I knew you had to work around that, bend the rules just like you bent the law that was keeping you from killing him. What else could I do?"

As a huge fragment of the ceiling fell from the roof and knocked down one of the large stone pillars, the buttresses keeping the temple erect, Quote blurted out the truth like a scolded child and awaited his punishment solemnly.

"I lied to you, Curly. With Date dead, soon I'm going to have to follow him. I'm sorry."

xxx

When Itoh came to again he was lying flat on his back with an emergency blanket rolled out beneath his body, tucked away in one of the corners of the helicopter's storage bay. His vision was drastically cut short by something tight around his face and his left arm was a stiff, throbbing stick by his side. He could barely move it at all and bending it was out of the question. He could hear the roaring choppers of the helicopter blades outside, cutting through the clouds with a cold determined efficiency. Itoh had to turn his head in order to see anything more than sky, because he was completely and totally blind in his left eye.

He could barely remember what had happened to him. He sat up to get a better look at his surroundings, then went red under his fur and squeaked when he realised that somebody had taken his lab jacket away from him, the only article of clothing that he had been wearing. He was sitting there completely naked. Embarrassed, Itoh tried to ignore the dizziness in his head and searched around for his clothing, finding it folded up neatly right next to his blanket. He picked it up eagerly with an intent to put it back on again.

Except that it was stained with blood.

Suddenly Itoh felt very faint. That blood couldn't have come from anything else except for himself. Indeed one of his arms was bound in a splint, and he guessed that the reason he couldn't see very well was because there were bandages around his face. He couldn't allow himself to faint again though, not when he had already done it once before. Deciding to ignore his nakedness, he figured it wasn't so bad because he was covered in fur, Itoh fought to stand up on his own two feet and walked over to the cockpit. He wanted to see who was flying the helicopter. That was meant to be _his_ job.

Momorin had always been a remarkably fast learner. The rocket scientist had had a very brief flip through the owner's manual of the helicopter she was piloting, and then only a short time later she had managed to get the large hunk of metal up and into the air. She was doing quite well for the level of experience she had in these matters, namely zero, but she still had absolutely no idea about what half of the buttons and dials scattered all over the dashboard in front of her face did.

She turned her head towards the entrance of the cockpit as Itoh slipped inside. The engineer wasn't made for things like this, or what had just happened to him, so she could see that he was suffering from a mild case of the shakes. Better now than earlier. "There you are." She greeted fondly, smiling from the pilot's seat. "I thought that if you didn't wake up soon I'd have to go and wake you up myself. I really don't have any idea on what I'm doing. All I've accomplished is to keep this helicopter stable in the air, yet further and further the island drops away from us."

His answer was weak. "What's happened?"

The green-haired woman turned back to the control panel that was blinking anxiously. "The island is going to smash upon the ground. Whatever mysterious forces that were keeping it in the air must have been nullified. I pray it means that the Doctor has been defeated and the mimigas are free, but we still haven't heard from the two robots that left to stop him, or from Kazuma… or Sue. I'm fearing the worst now, Itoh. I think they might have been killed. As for us up here, all we've been doing is waiting. It's tedious and nerve wracking, but it must be done."

Momorin wasn't the sort of woman who would cry freely, or in the presence of others. She was hurting deeply inside, Itoh could plainly see that, but for now she was acting as calm and collected as a surgeon. Maybe she would feel the full brunt of the grief later on, when they were all safe. Itoh stepped from the threshold of the cockpit and to Momorin's side. "We've got a good number of mimigas in the holding bay, so I don't think the species will go completely extinct. It's a shame we can't save their habitat, but we have to cut our losses at this point and move on." He winced a little from the pain in his arm. "What the heck happened to me? I don't remember getting hurt…"

"You got hit by shrapnel while you were in the falling zone. It probably only felt like a sting to you back then, but the shards of rock fractured your arm in two places and cut up the side of your face quite badly. You were pouring blood when you climbed back up into the helicopter. Head wounds bleed a lot, but you looked a lot worse than you really were. You really don't remember that?" She asked, mildly surprised.

Itoh felt his stomach turn over uncomfortably. He remembered running from the rocks, the sting and the small flight of steps that seemed ten times longer than they really were, but he didn't remember the blood. He must have been too deep into his fear and his terror even to _notice_ it. Perhaps it was just as well. "I'm not gonna die, am I?" He whispered meekly, touching his head bandages with his free hand.

Once more Momorin felt the great fondness for him that she had first experienced back in their campsite the night before. She herself was exhausted and more than halfway towards passing out, but was still moved by Itoh's unnecessary fear. "You're going to be fine." She reassured him as she checked their fuel meter for the umpteenth time in an hour. "We've obviously lost our medical doctor in the shenanigans of the past few weeks, but Koron and some of the other mimigas took a look at you. Koron bandaged you up herself."

He could see from where he was standing that the helicopter had enough fuel to last them for another six hours at the most, but then they'd have to land and recharge the energy crystals it was being powered on. Momorin had no reason to be so anxious about it. "Koron?" Itoh repeated dumbly, feeling stupid because all he was doing was asking questions.

The female scientist turned away from the dashboard again, but this time it was not towards him. She turned to the co-pilot's chair and tapped it gently, the chair swiveling around to reveal another mimiga sitting there, the flight manual resting in his lap. It was the same mimiga that had led the group to safety, their leader, the one who had been wearing protective goggles. Itoh hadn't even known he was there, he hadn't made a sound. "Can you take care of this for a little while, Jack? I won't be long."

Jack nodded and gave her a solid thumbs-up. "Will do. It's not a problem."

She got out of her chair and her co-pilot hopped into it, grasping at the steering wheel with his little hands. Itoh didn't know how much flight experience this mimiga had, but Momorin seemed to trust him, so that was probably good enough for him. If anything happened he'd be able to fly one-armed anyway, no sweat about it. The green haired woman removed her jacket and gave it to him, draping it over the confused mimiga's thin shoulders. "Here, put this on and follow me. You don't look right without a coat, Itoh."

Itoh accepted the garment only because he didn't know what else to do. It was far too big for him and he felt a little like a hunchback, but the fact that it came from Momorin made it seem all the more comfortable. He kept his splinted arm out of the sleeve, it would have been too painful to tackle with otherwise. Sighing, he followed his friend out of the cockpit and back into the holding bay, into the areas where the mimigas were sharing out their carefully preserved water and emergency rations with one another, half-starved and dehydrated that they were. Soon there would be nothing left, but if this wasn't an emergency, then nothing was.

Koron turned out to be the little girl that had screamed and cried underneath the fallen pillar while the rocks and crumbling foundation had fallen all around her. She was the one who had witnessed one of her own kind dying right before her eyes. She had seen many unnamable horrors before then, but Itoh wouldn't have known about them. The little girl was curled up at the edge of the helicopter's walls, incredibly close to where there was nothing but a sheer drop and the ground below them. She had a slice of bread in her hands, but it was only slightly nibbled upon. She was looking outside, upon the stone temple of the island.

The two scientists sat down beside her, as close to the edge as they dared. Ordinarily Itoh would have been half scared to death to be so close to such a ledge, but these were new times, new situations. This war that had been waged against the Doctor had changed everybody, nobody was exempt, and Itoh too. He had saved this child's life completely by mistake, because he was concerned for somebody else, but nobody would be able to help Koron now except for herself.

"Momma's still down there. We can't go back and get her, can we." She wasn't asking a question. She was only saying out loud what she knew to be true.

This was a child of whom Itoh knew nothing about, but it was still the child that he had saved. He felt responsible for her now, responsible for her life. After all, it was _he_ who had forced her to live. Secretly he thought that maybe he had committed upon her the greater cruelty. All the same, he put his uninjured arm around the little mimiga girl, who crawled into his side gratefully. Whoever or whatever was down there, it was lost to them now. "I'm sorry, we can't." He replied solemnly. "It's too dangerous now."

Koron already knew this. She was far from agreeing with it, but she was tired and was forced to accept it. "I know." She said softly, nodding once.

That was all that could be done. As the helicopter fought ruthlessly to stay safely within the air, carrying its precious load, the three people sitting upon the edge looked down, at the temple housing the secret that had ruined all of their lives.

xxx

Quote could have predicted her reaction with ease, indeed he had been counting on it, that was why he was afraid of her. He felt that he knew Curly well enough to dread this moment. She jumped him, grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him hard into the ground. The back of his head struck the floor painfully enough for him to wince, but he did not fight back. His fighting days were over for him now, he didn't even have a proper gun arm in which to shoot with. Curly had the right to be mad and Quote knew that he deserved this pain. He had turned out to be such a convincing liar, maybe he and the Doctor had not been so different after all.

Curly was leaning over him with her hands clenched into the few remaining tatters of his black shirt. She looked furious, and yet on the verge of bursting into tears. He could hear her growling just a little, like an angry animal. "How could you!" She cried, shoving him hard again. "How could you lie to me like that! We went through so much and I _trusted_ you, damn it! Tell me why!"

She wanted explanations and she wanted them _now_. She was well aware that Quote was seriously damaged but it didn't seem to matter to her anymore, she'd wring the answers out of his throat if she had to. Her creator had always remarked to her that she had a noticeably short fuse to go along with her stubborn nature, but that had always been one of the charms of her personality. It made her unique. A small part of her mind wished to trade it for something else, for patience or for a greater sense of empathy, but that would not be possible. She was who she was for a reason, an opposing force to contrast against the personality of her counterpart, Quote. Her partner.

He wanted to wait out her fit of rage until she was calm again, yet he didn't have enough time for that, or for the island either. Quote looked up at her calmly, thinking that Curly looked more beautiful when she was happy. He wanted to see her happy again. Carefully he raised his hand and placed it on one of her wrists, trying to make her let go of his clothing. She was going to rip it if she wasn't careful. "I did it because it was the only way. If I had told the truth Date would have killed you and you wouldn't have fought back. You can hate me for it as much as you want to, but I did it because I wanted you to survive."

Bowing her head a little so that he couldn't see her expression of anger turn to hurt, Curly still wanted to knock a fistful of sense into his empty head. He really didn't understand. If he had his old memories back he would, but he didn't. Quote was trying to make blind gestures under a veil of ignorance. "There's one thing I hate about you, Quote." She admitted in a low, neutral voice. "You can't think from any other point of view but your own, so you think that _your_ point of view is the only one that really exists or matters. You're so aggravatingly selfish."

This actually surprised him. "I'm not-" He began.

"Shut up!" Curly yelled, and this time she was actually beginning to cry. "I would have given my life to save yours. I've done that once before, you remember? It's because you're special to me, because I _care_ about you. The last thing I want you to give me is your life, I'd sooner die myself than put up with something like that. You might think that you're worthless just because you don't remember any of your past, but _I_ remember your past. I remember just how great of a robot you really used to be. You were a wonderful person, a leader, and _I_ _don't want you to die_."

"I'm not that person anymore." Quote answered softly, looking away from her, choosing to study a patch of ceiling above their heads that was laced with stressful cracks. No matter what he did, he always ended up putting Curly in danger. From the labyrinth, the waterway, and now here. He thought that it would end finally after his body was gone and his mind was silenced forever, but he hadn't stopped to think about how this would affect Curly mentally and emotionally. He knew very personally how horrible those kind of hurts could be. He was such a fool. "I don't want you to die either. You deserve to live. I deserve… I mean…" How could he say this without shocking her? "I _want_ to die."

It was just as he predicted. Curly froze with shock and let go of him, the other robot thumping heavily to the floor. She hadn't meant to drop him, she was just too surprised. The words that he had spoken to her just didn't compute with her processor, it clashed violently with the Third Law. A robot must survive, must always work to stay alive. Wishing for death was completely against the nature of a robot. Even in this dire situation Quote was still managing to surprise her. "You want to die?" She murmured quietly. "Why?"

It wasn't because of Curly. Quote at least wanted her to know that. The reason seemed so simple to him but he couldn't quite put it into words. There were no words for how he felt. When he had been bodiless and buried beneath the evil of the Doctor, words and physical objects ceased to have meaning. All that had been left were feelings, emotions. How could he convey that sense of deep sadness and guilt to his friend without hurting her even more?

Using a great deal of his energy Quote sat up, draping his hand and his ruined arm in his lap. He looked at them despondently. "There were things that he did to me that I never want to remember again. It was like torture but it was very different, the kind that hurts you and forces you to be drawn closer to somebody that you hate, until you lose track of where you end and the other begins. I don't want to remember it, but my mind has been altered so that I _have_ to remember it. I… uh, I don't know how to say this, but…" He looked up at her and Curly could read the utter misery emanating from beyond. "Curly… I just can't live with the memories that he gave me."

Suddenly she understood what he was talking about. The girl opened her mouth a little to speak but then closed it again, not sure on what she should say. Quote was too innocent to understand what had happened to him, his database wasn't extensive enough to offer a proper explanation, but Curly was both a robot of the female persuasion and was filled with her recovered information to boot. The Doctor hadn't just tortured him, he had…

Curly wished that the Doctor was still alive, just so she could kill him again.

She guessed that it all boiled down to one simple line of logical information. They were overcomplicating things by bringing in all sorts of outside reasoning. The fact of the matter was this; Quote couldn't leave the temple. He had become a golem of the demon crown, powered by magic rather than electricity, so when the crown was smashed, when the temple fell, when the whole _island_ fell, he would die with it. Even if Curly dragged Quote kicking and screaming out of the temple while it still stood erect his consciousness would starve to death for lack of magical energy and fade away. No matter what, he was bound to this place for the rest of his life. An idea struck her. The crown! They could just bring the crown with them as they escaped. As long as Quote kept the crown close to his body he wouldn't die.

No, that would be Third Law reasoning clashing against the Second Law. They had been ordered to destroy the crown. On that order they could not balk, it had to be done sooner or later. He was intent on finishing it off as soon as possible, not because of the laws, but because of his simple sense of responsibility. She had a responsibility as well. Curly would not leave Quote. She would _never_ leave Quote. They had already been forced to live apart for ten years of darkness, she was damned if she was going to face eternity alone. After all, they had been born together and had awoken holding each other's hand, she had wished that they could die together as well in the same fashion, scarcely an hour ago.

It looked like she was going to be granted of her wish.

"I'm going to stay with you." She said, leaning forward and taking Quote's hand, squeezing it lightly just as she had, long, long ago.

"Then you will die with me." He replied, watching her move with guarded distress and feeling it when she squeezed his hand. It seemed like there was some kind of strange significance to this action but he could not remember what. His mind was divided into two deep troubling thoughts. He hated the idea that Curly was going to sacrifice herself for no good reason when she could easily go back into the world and live a happy life, but he was also grateful that she would stay with him until it was all over. He didn't want to die alone.

"If that's what it takes." Curly whispered, and nothing could shake her mind. Without thinking she leant forward and untied the thick red scarf around Quote's neck, carefully pulling it free. This was the small article of clothing that had stopped her from breaking his neck earlier in the day. It smelt of water and cool mildewy cave air, laser cylinder acid and dust. It was their entire life, wrapped up in one little insignificant scent. She wrapped it around her own neck and flipped the end over her shoulder. "But I'm taking this."

"Hey…" Quote objected slowly. "That belongs to me…"

She smiled at him. "A long time ago you stole my hat because you lost yours in a training session. What? Haven't you ever wondered why your hat had 'Curly Brace' written on it?" Curly looked him up and down. "You've lost that hat as well. You're so forgetful. Honestly."

He sighed, his respirator groaning softly from the motion. He was beginning to lose feeling in certain parts of his body. That was alright, he didn't need them anymore. "Keep it then. You know, I really wish I could remember those days. I wish I knew what I was missing." Quote looked down at her hand clasped tightly within his. They didn't need an iron bond to keep themselves together. Bashfully he added; "Thank you for staying with me, at the end of all things. I was really afraid."

"It's because I love you, Quote." Curly said, and then spoke no more.

But that was enough. It was more than enough. Quote scooted over to her and lay down, resting his head in her lap like he was getting ready to go to sleep.

"I love you too, Curly." He answered, closing his eyes.

Together the two robots waited for the end to come.

They were still holding hands when that end came.

xxx

_In the activation chamber there had been two long metal tables, two towers of extensively sophisticated machinery behind it, connected to two high-powered specialized computers. Two robots were lying on the two tables, close enough together to be holding hands. Their positronic brains had been carefully tailored and installed, their bodies clothed and prepared. All that needed to be done was to download the computer's information through the towers and into their brains. Smiling kindly from his control panel, the dark-haired roboticist activated the installation program._

_The two robots flinched as they were injected with the miracle of life. Together they opened their eyes gradually and looked at each other in a blank, quietly interested fashion that was usually reserved for small human infants. The girl robot squeezed the boy robot's hand. He interpreted the first physical stimuli he ever received and answered by squeezing back. _

_"Hel-lo," the girl robot said, "my name is Curly Brace. What's yours?"_

_"Hel-lo," the boy robot echoed faithfully, "my name is Quote Marks. What's yours?"_

_Jin Sakamoto was pleased. A success._

_It looked like the beginning of a beautiful new friendship._

xxx

The temple collapsed in a thunderous roar that could be clearly heard even from the sky. The pillars buckled under the tremendous weight and the degrading vibrations below it, snapping like a bundle of twigs under extreme duress. Like a house of cards falling over the inner platforms collapsed on themselves and the walls around it folded into the center, containing the area of the destruction. It was not an amazing memorable explosion, it was an exhausted implosion, the temple dying just like an old flower withering away. Great clouds of dust rose from the debris, and far below the helicopter and the adventurers within, it became a mausoleum, a tomb for those trapped within. Sue Sakamoto. Misery. The Doctor. Curly Brace. Quote Marks.

They were all gone.

Green hair and long mimiga ears flapped in the high winds as Momorin, Itoh and Koron leant out of the helicopter in order to watch the spectacle, a sight that they would never see again in their entire lives. Truthfully they knew that they should be whooping and cheering with glee as that evil place was destroyed for ever and ever, but clinging around them like a thick shroud was an immense feeling of sadness. To silence that evil for good it had taken a lot of innocent lives, both organic and artificial. Lives that should have been led to their fullest and happiest.

Momorin raised a hand to her face and found with utter surprise that she was weeping. Deep down, in her heart of hearts she knew that one of those lives had been Sue. Her baby was gone forever.

Before she knew it Itoh had his arms around her waist and he was hugging her tightly, because of grief, relief and a deep sense that he didn't want to fall off the helicopter. It was an awkward hug, his arm was still splinted and stiff, but the affection was still there. Koron was between them, she was hugging her leg, crying audibly for her momma that was long gone. They were weak and tired cries, the insistent bleating of a little lost lamb.

"It's alright, Momo, Koron, it'll all be alright. I promise." Itoh said in a steady tone, although he was also weeping himself. He didn't really know what for, but he also had the vague idea that something innately precious to all of them had been lost. He was only a small fluffy little mimiga now, but he wanted to have the power to protect somebody, them, if possible. It was sad that it took such a terrible disaster for him to realise this, but he was grateful that it was true. He wouldn't let anything bad happen to Momorin or Koron ever again. In that sense he had finally found his bravery. It had been waiting inside of him all along.

"Hey! Get your hands off _my_ mother!"

A rival air current carried the massive weight of the sky dragon parallel against the flying helicopter. It was bright green and ecstatic, thrilled that it was being allowed to play in the open air for the first time in its life. Kazuma Sakamoto was riding between its shoulder blades and in front of its rapidly beating wings, his pristine white lab jacket fluttering in the breeze. His arms were around the dragon's neck, trying to guide it as best as he could. Clinging firmly to the dragon's rump was Professor Booster, holding on so tightly that his knuckles were bone-white and his eyes were squeezed shut. Itoh stared at the new additions to their entourage dumbly.

Smiling, Momorin wiped the tears away from her face. She hadn't cried in public since Jin had died. How uncharacteristic of her. "It's okay, Kazuma. It's only Itoh. Are you two alright? Have you been eating well?"

It had gotten to the point that Kazuma couldn't even remember _what_ he had been eating, let alone if it had been frequent or not. He hadn't starved to death, so that was a plus. Squinting hard at the mimiga beside his mother, the young biologist was about to draw his sky dragon closer towards the helicopter for a better look, but noticed that Jack was waving his arms wildly at him from the cockpit, telling him not to even dare. Fine. "Itoh? He's gone all… fluffy. Anyway, the island is going to completely fall in the next ten minutes. We don't want to be around when that happens. Apparently there's civilization to the north, we can make our way home from there."

"I don't wanna go…" Koron sobbed. "I wanna find Momma…"

Itoh let go of Momorin and picked up Koron. For now all his fears were gone. No matter how terrified he got, it paled in the fear that Koron would be feeling. He would never be able to truly empathize with her, but he hoped he was close to understanding how she felt. Because he loved this child. He loved her with all of his heart. "There's nothing left for us here." He said.

Swearing from the cockpit, Jack eventually found the right controls and altered the helicopter's direction to the north, putting his foot on the gas. Kazuma followed them on Puff. An unfamiliar country lay ahead of them.

These were new times. Frightening times. Their hardships were over.

Or…

Perhaps they had only just begun.

_-fin-_


End file.
